The Education Doctorate (Ed.D.) and Educational Leader Dispositions and Values in England and the United States

This chapter focuses on the dispositions and values of The Education Doctorate (Ed.D.) students in England and the United States as they conducted research, graduated, and entered their work communities.

We will present a brief review of the history of the Ed.D. and an explanation of signature pedagogy, which leads to a consideration of values, particularly as they relate to the connection between the researcher and the community. A synthesis of Banks (1991, 1998) description of the researcher’s position and stages of ethnic development provide a framework to analyze the experience of a doctoral student in England and a doctoral student in the United States.

The leaders developed multicultural dispositions through doctoral pedagogies that included the supervised creation of a doctoral thesis in a Higher Education Institution with access to resources. The resources included pedagogical relationships with program providers, a library and access to intellectual networks that built leadership capacity within the doctoral education system. Leaders designing and implementing their research and drafting and redrafting their doctoral thesis, engaged with pedagogies that developed a deep understanding of “what counts as evidence,” and critical and reflective thinking tools that enhanced their multicultural dispositions and habits of hearts, minds and hands.

The findings may contribute to informing decisions to invest in the doctoral dividend, policy and a research agenda into doctoral pedagogies.

New insights into the benefits of educational leaders investing in the doctoral dividend are revealed.