Christopher Benedetti and Amanda Covarrubias: Teaching Critical Inquiry and Applied Research: Moving Beyond Traditional Methods
Book Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/ie.2026.614Keywords:
education doctorate (EdD), scholar-practitioner, Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), signature pedagogies, applied research, doctoral educationAbstract
This review examines Teaching Critical Inquiry and Applied Research: Moving Beyond Traditional Methods, an edited volume by Christopher Benedetti and Amanda Covarrubias that confronts the education doctorate’s longstanding struggle to establish an identity distinct from the PhD. Organized around the principles of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), the collection’s thirteen chapters present signature pedagogies that prepare scholar-practitioners for systematic, equity-focused inquiry grounded in local practice. The review highlights the volume’s strengths, including its humanizing treatment of statistics anxiety and imposter syndrome, its consistent use of student reflections, and its alignment with the Responsible Conduct of Research. It also identifies limitations, notably the limited attention to the resource demands of these labor-intensive models and the risk that microcontextual inquiry may fragment the field’s cumulative knowledge. The book is recommended for EdD faculty, administrators, dissertation advisors, and doctoral students seeking a degree that is genuinely distinct from, rather than secondary to, the PhD.
References
Benedetti, C., & Covarrubias, A. (Eds.). (2024). Teaching critical inquiry and applied research: Moving beyond traditional methods. Myers Education Press.
Buss, R. R. (2019). Graduates' continuing work as scholarly practitioners after participation in a Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate guided, EdD program. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 14, 803–817. https://doi.org/10.28945/4451
Levine, A. (2005). Educating school leaders. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. ResearchGate
Shulman, L. S., Golde, C. M., Bueschel, A. C., & Garabedian, K. J. (2006). Reclaiming education's doctorates: A critique and a proposal. Educational Researcher, 35(3), 25–32.
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