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Since its inception at Harvard in 1921, the Doctorate in Education (EdD) has been a degree fraught with confusion as to its purpose and distinction from the PhD. In response to this, the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), a collaborative project consisting of 80+ schools of education located in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand were established to undertake a critical examination of the EdD and develop it into the degree of choice for educators who want to generate knowledge and scholarship about practice or related policies and steward the education profession. However, programmatic changes in higher education can bring both benefits and challenges (Levine, 2005). This chapter explains: the origins of the education doctorate; how CPED as a network of partners has changed the EdD; the use of bi-annual Convenings as spaces for this work; CPED’s three phases of membership that have built the network; CPED’s path forward.

Professional practice doctorate programs’ purpose is to prepare practitioners in the industry to lead and solve current and future complex problems with the application of research. The authors aim to argue that leadership, critical friends, and engagement of the education community together have the potential to assist in enhancing professional practice doctorate graduates’ outcomes.

From three case studies of redesign and implementations of Ed. D. programs associated with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate, the authors discuss how distributed leadership and implementation of contemporary motivational concepts within a university empowers and incentivizes faculty to develop and enhance effectiveness of professional practice doctorates.

The concept of critical friends, those who are not invested in a specific situation, can provide objective and fresh insight and is applied as a reform strategy. Engaging the industry, that is, the education community, to further in‐context experiences for both faculty and graduate students provides not only venues for research and continual updates in the field, but also access to data, participants, and information needed for both doctoral dissertations in practice, but also faculty research. The authors conclude that the three concepts support enhancement of effectiveness of professional practice doctorate programs and accountability for graduates’ impact in the workplace.

The authors’ analyses of two professional doctorate programs generated three themes as important contributors to the (re)design, implementation, and evaluation of the Ed.D.: leaders, critical friends, and the education community. By considering the roles of leaders, critical friends, and the education, a conceptual model can be developed to support success.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a longitudinal study that explored the perceptions and experiences of part-time doctoral students using the researching professional development framework (RPDF) as they progressed through the first year of their EdD programme at a research-led English University.

Following an initial questionnaire completed by students and supervisors (n = 18), six students were interviewed at the beginning, middle and end of the year.

The findings suggest that students found the RPDF had been of particular value early in their studies and had helped them realise that they were developing their identity as researching professionals, ready to make a difference to professional practice through their research.

While Doctorate in Education (EdD) courses have been around for some time, supporting frameworks have tended to be based on traditional PhD routes of study, with the unique development needs of part-time students (who are often working full-time and undertaking research into their professional context) often being ignored. To fill this gap, the authors recently proposed a new framework – the Researching Professional Development Framework – which was specifically developed to support EdD students by offering them an opportunity to reflect on key areas of their professional development as they progress through their studies.

This chapter provides a retrospective and prospective exploration of some of the challenges faced by doctoral education, specifically as they relate to advanced studies of educational administration (EA).

It applies a critical stance to the current status of knowledge in the ‘leadership field’ and the intellectual underpinnings that inform the studies available as reference for doctoral students.

Nested within wider changing conditions for university and doctoral education, it is argued that the published field as currently constituted suffers from both banal and ‘non-wicked’ leadership orthodoxies that might lead to doctoral stagnation.

Reasons are suggested and prospects considered for revitalising scholarship for the upcoming generation of EA alumni, scholars and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is related to how students and academics in a business school perceive the doctor of business administration (DBA) in terms of its purpose and value compared to that of the conventional PhD.

The research methodology involved a two-stage approach in which a pilot questionnaire and short interviews with 37 students was followed by a second questionnaire to 21 academics employed at a business school at a post-1992 English university.

The findings suggest that although the DBA is valued as means to develop professional knowledge and expertise, the PhD remains the premier choice for those who wish to embark on an academic career. The DBA does, however, also represents a development of work-based learning in higher education.

The research was undertaken at one post-1992 university business school, further research should look to expand the sample size and include a variety of business schools from both pre- and post-1992 universities in England.

The paper does offer a justification for the continued development of the DBA and professional doctorates in general in terms of the development of work-based learning in higher education.

This paper aims to critically examine the quality of professional doctorates (PDs) from the perspective of programme supervisors in terms of how quality assurance provisions have to meet their expectations.

The study employed an interpretative approach, using semi-structured interviews and online semi-structured questionnaire to generate data from 25 programme supervisors across universities in the UK. Data analysis and interpretation were carried out using the interactive data analysis approach (Miles and Huberman, 1994), the “bottom–up” approach to data analysis (Creswell, 2012) and the interpretative strategy recommended by Mason (2002). Four themes emerged from the data that encapsulated programme advisors’ perspectives: characteristics of supervisors; opportunities in institutional quality assurance provision; challenges in quality assurance process for PDs; and supervisors’ views on how quality assurance in PD can be enhanced.

Quality assurance provisions have not adequately provided for the unique characteristics of PDs owing to a number of issues including lack of clarity on the philosophy and focus of PDs and conflicting perspectives among PD supervisors relating to what should ideally constitute a quality assurance process for PDs. This paper argues that to develop a relevant and robust quality assurance provision for PDs, it would be essential to ensure that the PD fundamental philosophy and focus are coherently explained. In addition, it is crucial to ensure that quality assurance provisions cover not only the academic rigor of higher level learning but also the value and potential impact of outcomes on practice and the professions. The paper also highlights a list of useful suggestions from supervisors on how to enhance quality assurance.

The research identifies a number of issues confronting quality assurance in PDs and the need for academics and policymakers to work together to deal with these to achieve the full value in PDs. As the research was based on a sample of 25 supervisors in a conference, it would be difficult and unsustainable to generalise. Hence, further research using large sample sizes of supervisors and other stakeholders based on whole programmes would be useful to achieve a sustained understanding of how quality assurance provisions of PDs have to meet expectations of the professions and professional contexts.

To get the practical value and benefits of PDs, all stakeholders (academics, policymakers and professionals) would need to work together to ensure that appropriate quality assurance processes are developed to reflect the unique nature of the programmes.

The paper provides a critical perspective to the current debate on quality assuring PDs from the perspective of PD supervisors who have generally been left out. It highlights issues related to quality assuring PDs, the misalignment between quality assurance provisions and the philosophy and expectations of PDs, and suggests ways through which these can be appropriately addressed to enhance quality assurance in PDs. The main contribution from this research is that it brings to the fore what supervisors, who are a part of the major players in the PD process, think about the current state of quality assurance and what can be done to make it more effective.

This paper is about action learning and the pedagogy of professional doctorates. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pedagogical problems of the relatively new professional doctorates and consider whether action learning offers potential solutions.

This conceptual paper seeks to answer the question: how good is the fit between the learning processes of action learning and the learning goals of professional doctorates?

The main conclusions of the paper are that action learning can support the learning of students enroled on professional doctorates by helping them realise the following three key learning outcomes, namely, the capacity to contribute to the advancement of knowledge, that is relevant to professional practice; their own personal and professional capabilities as practitioners; and their capacity to bring about change that directly enhances professional practice, i.e. they can make a direct contribution to professional practice, e.g. through some successful project that they undertake.

While this paper is not based on research, the main implication is that action learning can offer a valuable pedagogic approach in supporting the learning of professional doctoral candidates towards their goal of making an original contribution to the advancement of professional practice.

A second implication is the need for many of those university academics responsible for leading and managing professional doctorates to become more familiar with the theory and practice of action learning. A third implication is the appreciation of the need to weigh up cost against the benefits of using action learning as a pedagogic process on professional doctorates.

This conceptual paper is original as it explores the fit of action learning with pedagogic issues of professional doctorates.