Reclaiming the Education Doctorate

Reclaiming the Education Doctorate: A Guidebook for Preparing Scholarly Practitioners is a practical guide for those seeking to (re)design a professional practice doctorate program in education that prepares Scholarly Practitioners. To tackle the comprehensive change process necessary for (re)designing the EdD, this book will guide the reader with an improvement lens that looks at the roots of the confusion of the EdD, the system that created it, and the framework that helped to reclaim it.

Readers will be guided through a backward mapping (re)design process that begins with defining graduate outcomes, maps through the milestones and courses, ends with rethinking the admissions process. Along the way, readers will learn how to design and integrate a dissertation in practice into the curriculum, consider best practices for their program (re)design, and view examples of successful programs. Additionally, to support readers in their (re)design efforts, each chapter will offer exercises, tools, and resources that will guide the process. The book will prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone developing or revising their EdD program.

After the opening chapter that explains the mission statement of Reclaiming the Education Doctorate, Jill Perry structures chapters to deal with the full range of issues that impact EdD programs, including:

• Roots of the EdD Problem
• Aim: The Professional Practice Doctorate Driving Change
• Backward mapping: beginning with the end
• The heart of the program: Curriculum
• The beginning: Admitting Candidates
• Measuring Impact
• Leading Change

"Reclaiming the Education Doctorate: A Guidebook for (re)Designing EdD Programs serves as a beacon for academics seeking to (re)design their approach to preparing the next educational leaders. Advocating for students to emerge as leaders for change, this guide underscores the application of research and inquiry in real-world settings. It uniquely bridges theory with tangible professional practice, stressing approaches and methodologies designed for professional practitioners to merge knowledge with action. This book provides a roadmap for redefining professional excellence, urging faculty to look beyond their traditional preparation and to find resources to teach traditional content in applied and practical ways."--Joseph W. McNabb, PhD, Professor of the Practice, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts
"Reclaiming the Education Doctorate provides guidance to university faculty and administrators on transforming the Ed.D. to a professional practice degree. Jill Alexa Perry, executive director of the Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, ...provides practical examples, discussion and reflection questions and suggests additional reading to support the redesign. The book differentiates between Ph.D. and Ed.D. programs while justifying the need for both. Although the primary audience is higher education, school district leaders can leverage the book's content to spark conversations with higher education partners to identify problems of practice that connect to the needs of the school system."--Excerpt of a School Administrator magazine review (March 2025) by Tiara Booker-Dwyer, senior policy associate, Policy Studies Associates, Owings Mills, MD
"Perry's book, Reclaiming the Education Doctorate: A Guidebook for Preparing Scholarly Practitioners, emerges as the first complete, step-by-step guide for designing and improving EdD programs. It utilizes the framework of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), the leading international consortium in the contemporary EdD field, to create a practical guide for faculty members and institutions interested in establishing an EdD program that nurtures scholarly practitioners . . . Reclaiming the Education Doctorate is crafted in an engaging and systematic way, offering comprehensive information and step-by-step guidance for the development of strong and relevant EdD programs." (Click here to see full review at Impacting Education.)--Excerpt of review in Impacting Education journal (Vol. 9, No. 4), Veselina Lambrev, PhD, University of South Florida
"Framing the development of an educational doctorate as a professional degree and as an improvement project, Perry guides readers through the design process. Her strategic use of improvement tools provides a model for bringing to life the guiding principles of the CPED Framework and the backward mapping process. Whether you are EdD-curious or already flying the plane while you're building it, Reclaiming the Education Doctorate: A Guidebook for (re)Designing EdD Programs offers ideas, tools, and strategies that can be used immediately, along with food for thought for the long-term transformation of the education doctorate."--Sarah J. Zuckerman, PhD, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Dr. Jill Alexa Perry is the Executive Director of the Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate (CPED) and an Associate Professor of Practice in the Educational Foundations, Organizations and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on professional doctorate preparation in education, organizational change in higher education, and faculty leadership roles. Currently she is researching the ways EdD programs teach practitioners to utilize research evidence. She teaches and coaches how to teach Improvement Science in EdD programs. Her books include The Improvement Science Dissertation in Practice, The EdD and the Scholarly Practitioner, and In Their Own Words: A Journey to the Stewardship of the Practice in Education.

Dr. Perry is a graduate of the University of Maryland, where she received her PhD in International Education Policy. She holds an MA in Higher Education Administration and a BA in Spanish and International Studies from Boston College. She has over 25 years of experience in leadership and program development in education and teaching experience at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels in the US and abroad. She is a Fulbright Scholar (Germany) and a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Paraguay).

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