An Adaptive Model for a Rigorous Professional Practice Doctorate

Abstract

As part of the current re-envisioning movement in professional practice doctoral education, the culminating activity and subsequent product have received heightened scrutiny. This chapter responds to the mandate that, in order to differentiate herself from her sister, the research-based PhD dissertation, the EdD's capstone exercise and culminating product arise through a practice-based, pedagogically appropriate application reflecting the philosophy and principles established for a problem-based dissertation in practice. Inexorably bound to context, and therefore unique in purpose, practice-driven models reflect a range of purposes and formats. This chapter presents a model that engages improvement science methods, the four dimensions characterizing a problem-based thesis, and the lens of contemporary thinking on the professional practice degree. The disquisition is an alternative capstone framework that affords doctoral candidates the opportunity to develop the qualitatively distinct ‘empirically-grounded know-how' of practitioner-scholar thinking.