Chapter 5: Learning to See Inquiry as a Resource for Practice

All doctoral students are faced with the challenge of learning research methodologies that are new to them while simultaneously trying to identify research topics of interest. In doing so, they struggle to articulate focused research questions that are judged worthy of study by standards external to themselves and yet about which they are passionate. They must choose simultaneously a research methodology that matches their research questions, that aligns with their own epistemological goals, and that engages in practice in a way less commonly embraced by orthodox education research. This chapter is about the learning of doctoral students in the midst of these intellectual challenges. The students were full time practitioners participating in the first cohort of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), pursuing a Doctor of Education (EdD) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). The EdD program was a new program at UNL, for both them and the faculty with whom they studied, that aimed to support the development and legitimacy of rigorous practitioner research as a part of doctoral work (Anderson & Herr, 1999) and to offer an alternative to the traditional Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in education within the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education.