PRODUCTS

From Getting Started to Graduation: A Student Guide to the EdD, a volume in The Coming of Age of the Education Doctorate Series book series, pulls back the curtain on the hidden curriculum of the EdD experience for students, fully supporting their journeys by making what is too often anxious and abstract more clear and concrete. Drawing from years of experience from designing and directing an EdD program, the authors provide an end-to-end playbook for students to draw from as they navigate their own EdD program of choice.

Part I focuses on getting started. The book begins with an establishment of the why behind getting an EdD and how this is a distinct and unique experience unlike other graduate degrees. It pushes readers to think beyond the title, encouraging them to drill down into their core motivation for pursuing not just a degree but a transformative experience. Readers will then learn about finding the match quality between their goals and aspirations and the myriad program choices available to them. Once students have winnowed down their choices and found their fit, they will be coached on how to build survival systems that will help them thrive from the onset to the finish line. This includes learning how to pace themselves, how to lean on friends and family, how to create contingency plans, and how to create helpful constraints that make room for work-life balance. The book closes Part I with helpful tips for time and resource management, as well as how to build routines and habits that allow them to be kind of their future selves.

Part II explicitly explores how to navigate this years-long quest and stay the course. Readers will learn how to get curious and keep that door open across coursework in order to allow for innovative and creative ideas to flourish and eventually lead to fusion—the key to creative thinking. With the door opened to ideas and exploration, the book sets the stage for how to become a scholar-practitioner through key habits of mind such as the what-if and maybe mindset and tackling the tough task of synthesis. Part II ends with the call to team up and to take this winding road together. The EdD experience can be lonely if students go it alone, and the volume explains how and why teaming up is not just nice but necessary to persevere as the way to reach the finish line.

Finally, Part III pivots to helping students survive the intensive thinking, researching, and writing demands of the dissertation. Readers will tap into years of tips and tricks on how to break this mystifying and monstrous project into sizable and achievable small steps that fuel motivation for the long haul so that students avoid burnout during the final push as they near defending their projects and crushing their comps. When finished, EdD students will be able to leverage what is too often hidden from students and draw from the concrete examples, strategies, stories, and templates therein in order to start strong and finish strong.

Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Research; Research Methodology; Introduction to the EdD; The Scholar-Practitioner; Exploring Problems of Practice; Becoming a Change Agent

The Disquisition: An Equity-Driven Capstone for Leadership Preparation Programs provides a thoughtful, detailed example of a capstone process and paper (The Disquisition) that employs improvement science, critical theory, and critical praxis to prepare educational leaders to disrupt inequity within their organizations. The chapters in this book represent 12 years of collaborative learning among experienced, respected, and award-winning leadership preparation faculty presently at or formerly from Western Carolina University (WCU). It integrates multiple sources of data from research, student feedback, faculty experiences, capstone committee member input, learnings from the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), and program evaluation data examining the achievement of student learning outcomes.

Following foundational chapters that describe the origin and evolution of the disquisition at WCU and its focus on social justice, faculty present six chapters—each one clearly detailing a primary component of the disquisition process and paper including the problem of practice; a causal analysis; identifying the improvement initiative; designing the improvement initiative; evaluating the improvement initiative and reporting results; and implications, recommendations, and leadership lessons learned. Each of these chapters includes a brief introduction to the component; expectations for students as practitioners (leading the work); expectations for students as scholars (evaluating and writing about the work); an excerpt from the disquisition paper outline relevant to the component; example figures, tables, or text from completed disquisition papers; and scholarly resources for scholar-practitioners. The final chapter of the book presents the process for convening a disquisition committee, a description of the IRB process, and the expectations for defending the disquisition at both the proposal defense and the final defense meeting.  Although this book is written as a guide for students engaging in the disquisition process and writing the disquisition paper, it serves as a strong model for leadership preparation programs and university administrators who seek to build or refine their capstone (and program) in ways that ensure students are prepared to lead justice-driven transformation across their organizations.

Perfect for courses such as: Dissertation-in-Practice Writing; Academic Writing for the Scholar Practitioner; Capstone-Independent Study; Capstone-Student Learning Community; Improvement Science: Data Collection, Analysis & Reporting; Improvement Science: Data Presentation; The Role of the Scholar-Practitioner as Educational Leader