Reclaiming Education’s Doctorates: A Critique and a Proposal

The problems of the education doctorates are chronic and crippling. The purposes of preparing scholars and practitioners are confused; as a result, neither is done well. We must move forward on two fronts simultaneously: rethinking and reclaiming the research doctorate (the Ph.D.), with its strong links to practice, and developing a robust and distinct practice doctorate (the P.P.D.) with a distinctive scholarly base. Unlike most current education Ph.D.s and Ed.D.s, the two degrees would serve distinct purposes, and like their medical analogs—the biomedical Ph.D. and the M.D.—would have different curricula and assessments. Building on lessons learned in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate and in the Carnegie Foundation’s studies of preparation for the professions, we argue that this reform is necessary and possible.