EdD Aspirations, Outcomes, Signature Pedagogies

EdD Mission

The mission of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College EdD in Leadership and Innovation is to prepare leaders as scholarly and influential practitioners.  This terminal degree program is designed to equip leaders with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions – with the minds, hands, and hearts - to resolve problems of practice and improve local situations.

EdD Design Aspirations

The EdD in Leadership and Innovation is aligned with the design aspirations of Arizona State University as a New American University with a vision for transforming higher education http://mynew.asu.edu/:

• • Leverage Our Place: Students embrace and understand the cultural, socio-economic, and physical setting of organizations in Arizona and address the challenges of improving education and other organizational aspects, here and now.

  • Transform Society: Doctoral students’ research in action improves the organizations and communities where they live and work so that Arizona’s schools and organizations become increasingly effective as agents of transformation for learners and communities.

  • Value Entrepreneurship: In a developing tradition of academic enterprise, doctoral students become research professionals as they conduct research with scaffolded support; seek mentors outside the college and university to further their development as leaders; and cross boundaries between academia and professional practice in pursuit of knowledge.

  • Conduct Use-Inspired Research: ASU research has purpose and application; it meets community needs to enhance the quality of life. Doctoral students conduct repeated cycles of research in action that address needs in their organizations to create a synergy of transformation in people and organizations.

  • Enable Student Success: In a new teaching/learning environment, doctoral students and faculty form leading communities of practice that meet regularly to provide support for each individual and for the class as a whole, creating conditions for successful matriculation from admission to completion of the degree in three years. Doctoral students become increasingly self-directed leader-scholars and committed members of a community.

  • Fuse Intellectual Disciplines: Students in the program learn to transcend disciplinary boundaries by using a problem-oriented approach that encourages dynamic intellectual interaction and enables students to learn from the world around them.

  • Be Socially Embedded: Students strengthen communities by contributing to community dialogue and responding to community needs. We provide an education that’s inclusive rather than exclusive. Our students engage in the world around them.

Planned Learning Outcomes

As a result of this doctoral program, successful candidates will demonstrate the following outcomes:

As Leaders

• • Provide strategic leadership in educational or other work-based settings.

  • Contribute leadership for innovative practices to address work-based issues in a socially responsive manner.

  • Support community leadership through the integration of innovation in schools, higher education organizations, agencies, and communities.

  • Render a vision for leadership that underscores national trends in innovation to confront regional and local community issues.

As Change Agents

• • Understand the change process, how educational innovation stimulates change including the relationship of mission, vision, leadership, goals and objectives to decision making.

  • Lead and manage change and create collaborative action that supports organization and community advancement.

As Data-Informed Decision Makers

• • Understand and advocate for research-based best practices to support instruction and standards-based curriculum leading to high levels of student achievement or higher levels of productivity in organizations.

  • Conduct and mix quantitative and qualitative research methods on actions intended to effect organizational excellence through systematic inquiry.

  • Improve the quality of services within the educational or organizational communities with the effective use of technology and other innovations.

  • Implement data-based decision making through professional practice with the effective use of technology and other innovations.

As Collaborators

• • Consult with other professionals in schools, businesses, and government agencies to address mutual concerns regarding professional decision making.

  • Understand, create, and support professional development communities of practice incorporating the needs of adult learners who desire to improve learning, teaching, and organizational productivity in innovative ways.

Signature Pedagogies

The signature pedagogies of the EdD in Leadership and Innovation involve action research and communities of practice.

Action research

• • Action Research is a form of disciplined, reflective inquiry into one's professional practices for the purpose of moving towards a principled vision, which is supported in action.

  • Students design and implement multiple cycles of action research within their workplaces – their laboratories of practice -- that culminate in action research dissertations.

  • Faculty in core research courses use students’ experiences with ongoing research as the vehicle for presenting, practicing, and refining action research.

  • Faculty model and demonstrate action research by conducting their own studies in their workplace.

  • Students conduct, write up, and report research cycles to the university community through roundtables, posters, and symposia, which are presented at Research Day each semester.

Communities of practice

• • Communities of practice consist of groups of people engaged in common work who learn from and with one another.

  • Students are admitted as a cohort, brought together through co-taught common coursework, grouped into smaller leader-scholar communities, and led to build community among overlapping groups.

  • Students take on apprenticeship roles as they collaborate with more experienced members on authentic tasks.

  • Program faculty and staff are committed to enabling students who are in good standing to complete the program in three years.

The EdD in Leadership and Innovation has its own mission, goals, and strategies, but these are also aligned with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) and the design aspirations of Arizona State University (ASU).  CPED is a consortium of 88 Colleges and Schools of Education from the United States and around the world who have come together to work collaboratively to reframe, reimagine, and redesign the EdD to make the relevant to educational leaders at all levels.

The goal of CPED and its affiliated institutions is to develop educational    leaders who are scholarly practitioners, individuals who combine practical wisdom, professional knowledge, and research skills to identify, frame, and solve problems of practice. To provide direction in attaining this goal, CPED-influenced programs subscribe to six working principles.

As members of CPED, we believe:

“The professional doctorate in education prepares educators for the application of appropriate and specific practices, the generation of new knowledge, and for the stewardship of the profession.”

With this understanding, we have subscribed to the following CPED principles.

The Professional doctorate in education:

• 1. Is framed around questions of equity, ethics, and social justice to bring about solutions to complex problems of practice.

  2. Prepares leaders who can construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, organizations, and communities.

  3. Provides opportunities for candidates to develop and demonstrate collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships.

  4. Provides field-based opportunities to analyze problems of practice and use multiple frames to develop meaningful solutions.

  5. Is grounded in and develops a professional knowledge base that integrates both practical and research knowledge, that links theory with systemic and systematic inquiry.

  6. Emphasizes the generation, transformation, and use of professional knowledge and practice.