Chapter 10: The Problem of Practice Dissertation: Matching Program Goals, Practices, and Outcomes

In its early history, the Education Doctorate (EdD) at Rutgers University was the only doctorate that the Graduate School of Education (GSE) could award; it did not have a PhD program (Ryan, De Lisi, & Heuschkel, 2012). The school was allowed to grant PhDs starting in 1997, but the addition of four new PhD programs did not spur discussion about differences between the two doctoral programs. The main adjustment to the EdD program made after the PhD program was initiated was to bring down the number of credits required for graduation so that it matched the PhD. After that, the EdD program sputtered along more or less untouched for years. The GSE ran multiple EdD programs which coexisted, and sometimes overlapped, with the PhD programs, all functioning as relatively separate programs and with no articulated or substantial operational differences in mission, content, format, or learning goals (Ryan et al., 2012). Whether a particular area of study had an EdD, Phd or both programs affiliated with it was more an artifact of school history and politics than rational decision-making. All programs required the same number of credits, a set number of research courses, and a dissertation, but they had little else in common and there was no significant, schoolwide oversight to insure consistency across programs. Each EdD and PhD program had its own coordinator and set its own rules for course requirements and qualifying exams. Not only was there no thought given to the relationship of programs within the PhD or the EdD, there was very little talk about what distinguished the EdD from the PhD. Among the many areas that could have been adjusted to differentiate the two programs was the dissertation. However, no one thought it necessary to define the EdD dissertation as distinctive from a PhD dissertation, and everyone took it for granted that they would know a defendable one in either program when they saw it (Lovitts, 2005). At that time, EdD dissertations could run the gamut from philosophical to historical, phenomenological to empirical; and while they might be practice based, they were just as likely not to be. The same could be said of PhD dissertations at the time.