Centering the Scholarly Practitioner Within the EdD

The Educational Doctorate (EdD) is designed to meet the needs of current practitioners who aim to expand their professional expertise by leveraging deep knowledge and research methods to address specific and contextualized problems of practice. This approach centers on developing scholarly practitioners that are equipped with the skills necessary to bridge the knowledge-to-doing gap and contribute meaningfully to school improvement (CPED, 2020; Donovan, 2013; Hochbein & Perry, 2013; Jackson & Sun, 2022; Lewis et al., 2020; Perry, Zambo, & Crow, 2020). To achieve this goal, program faculty and their respective thinking must be concerned with and oriented to the scholarly practitioner and their unique positionality. This paper explores two considerations related to centering scholarly practitioners and their impact to illustrate the possibilities inherent within EdD programs.