Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice

Nourishing Alternatives

Vachel Miller, Star Brown — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

This special issue explores the expanding landscape of alternative dissertations within Doctor of Education (EdD) programs, showcasing how scholar-practitioners are reimagining the dissertation as a dynamic platform for addressing authentic problems of practice. Moving beyond the traditional five-chapter format, EdD programs are embracing formats such as dissertations-in-practice, public scholarship, portfolios, and multimedia projects. These alternatives encompass theoretically informed inquiries that reframe problems of practice through multifaceted lenses, empowering educational leaders with new ways to understand, navigate, and respond to the complex realities of their work. In this introduction, we provide a conceptual overview of the shift toward alternative dissertations, through the work of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) and calls to bridge theory and practice. We also preview the articles in this issue, which offer insights about the design, implementation, and implications of alternative dissertation models from multiple perspectives across institutions—including those of Graduate Schools, programs, faculty advisors, and students. Collectively, these contributions illuminate how EdD programs and EdD students are reshaping the dissertation to better serve educational leaders and their communities, while honoring the complexity and diversity of scholarly practice.

Asking What If?

John Lando Carter, Kevin S. Krahenbuhl — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

The long-standing traditions of the dissertation are long overdue for a challenge. Creative and disruptive thinkers operate with a default what if? mindset that helps them challenge the status quo (Carter & Krahenbuhl, 2022). It is time for creative minds in higher education to kick-start how and why they see new opportunities beyond the traditional dissertation. What if the five-chapter format could be broken and replaced with a physical or digital portfolio that showcases students’ evolution as scholar-practitioners? What if EdD students could create a docu-dissertation film, one that allows students to uncover and highlight powerful stories? These what-ifs still retain the core competencies of a traditional dissertation: a relevant, timely research question, literature review, taking action in the field, gathering results, and drawing conclusions. We offer reasons for change and what the future of the EdD could be if we take what Beghetto (2018) calls beautiful risks.

It Is Harder to Generate Alternative Dissertations Than It Looks

Edmund T. Hamann, Laura Boche — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

This study examines 39 education doctorate (EdD) dissertations that were completed by members of five cohorts of EdD students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s (UNL) Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education (TLTE) to consider what constitutes an alternative dissertation. All of the dissertation authors began their EdD studies after UNL began its affiliation with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED). After pondering what makes an EdD dissertation “alternative”, the article notes both that most of the dissertations remain traditional (i.e., structurally like doctorate of philosophy [PhD] dissertations) and that all of the advising faculty are PhD-holders. The article does offer accounts of two dissertations, however, that seem to encapsulate well the spirit and rationale for alternative dissertations or dissertations in practice (DiPs).

A Three-Chapter DiP

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Led by CPED’s reconceptualization of the Education Doctorate, EdD programs nationally continue to explore ways to re-envision the Dissertation-in-Practice (DiP) specifically for the development of Scholar-Practitioners. Even as work on innovative dissertation formats has accelerated, many, if not most, DiPs still resemble traditional five-chapter academic dissertations. This article explores an alternative three-chapter DiP format with a balanced focus on (1) an action research study conducted by the candidate, and (2) the candidate’s application of findings, alongside social and organizational theory, in their leadership practice. In this way, the three-chapter DiP balances a focus on research and leadership practice, amenable to review, critique, and use by practitioners as well as academics. In this essay, faculty and recent-graduate coauthors describe their first-hand perspectives navigating this model as students and faculty, and add to the emerging landscape of practice regarding EdD dissertations. We outline the rationale, purpose, and assessment guidelines defining this format, and describe key challenges we encountered. Moreover, we discuss the model's flexibility in application, highlighting examples and approaches used by students. The discussion will be useful for EdD programs, faculty, and students who are interested in exploring innovative DiP models that are grounded in both research and practice.

Dossier Style Dissertations

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Practitioner-oriented dissertations are unique in their potential to address wicked problems through relevant and timely applications of empirical research that can facilitate rapid change. This account describes the dossier style dissertation, a newly re-imagined dissertation of Johns Hopkins University’s Doctor of Education program, with two options-an empirical deep dive and an applied project. Three graduates of the program illustrate their journeys with the dossier style dissertation-applied project, describe their work with research-practice partners and professional organizations, and highlight their growth as scholar-practitioners. Implications for practice and the merits of EdD program doctoral research options are discussed.

Integrative Approach

Candyce Reynolds, Melissa Pirie, Mandi Mizuta, Sheila Mullooly — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

This paper explores the use of Integrative Doctoral ePortfolios as an alternative dissertation format within the Portland State University Educational Leadership doctoral program (EdD). The EdD program focuses on preparing working professionals for leadership roles in education. The traditional five chapter dissertation format, while rigorous, can feel disconnected from the professional lives of these students. This article describes the successful implementation of a multi-paper ePortfolio dissertation option for three recent graduates and discusses the implications for EdD programs.

Transforming Dissertations into Global and Career-Advancement-Centered Doctoral Digital Portfolios

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

This is a collaborative article co-authored by an EdD Director and five doctoral students who are embarking on their final year research journey. The article offers 1) a discussion of the design and development of a global and career-advancement-centered doctoral digital portfolio (DDP), and 2) an advocacy towards alternative dissertation formats with social media dissemination while maintaining research rigor. The doctoral students corroborate the significance and benefits of the DDP for democratizing the knowledge dissemination with improved accessibility and interactivity. Most importantly, the DDP offers a new possibility for EdD doctoral students to transform traditional textual dissertations into a digital format that is relevant to the diversified audience and readership, including potential employers.

The Power of Praxis

Ane Turner Johnson, Monica Reid Kerrigan — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Higher education is witnessing a shift towards greater public engagement. Public scholarship, research conducted with and for the public, presents a compelling opportunity for doctoral programs in education. This article examines public scholarship and the public scholarship dissertation as a distinctive approach that transcends traditional formats and boundaries. We argue that this format promotes collaboration with the public, enhances research impact, and highlights the dissertation's practical potential. The article explores the nature of the public scholarship dissertation at Rowan University, a public research university, to examine the form, function, and procedures involved in engaging with this approach. We explore the key considerations of a public scholarship dissertation, including the balance between scholarship and public engagement, candidate preparedness, and advising practices. The article concludes with cautions and encouragements for faculty and scholar-practitioners considering ways to communicate doctoral research both to and beyond the academy.

Reimagining Doctoral Research

Amna Jaffer, Radha Aravamudhan, Kristina Grasty — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Documentary filmmaking is presented as a viable research component to doctoral programs in education that center social change. Documentary filmmaking is an established and valid qualitative research option that utilizes academic research skills, critical analysis, and creativity to convey significant findings regarding social issues to a broad audience. The documentary filmmaking format provides doctoral candidates meaningful ways to represent themselves and their specific perspectives in relation to the identified problems of practice. The benefits of utilizing documentary filmmaking as a research method include recording authentic voices of individuals directly associated with the problem of practice, thereby effectively elucidating nuances of the challenges as experienced and spotlighting potential solutions to address the specific problem. Other benefits of this alternative method include broader dissemination, more expansive viewership, and serving as a model form of research to advance social change.

Research Through My Lens

Sharice K. Lane — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Scholar-practitioners can use dissertations as an entry point to provide rigorous, inclusive and accessible research-based information for the education community. One method to make these dissertations more inviting beyond the education community is to expand the acceptance of alternative media modes. Documentaries have recently grown in popularity as streaming services and social media have democratized storytelling across the public. A documentary as an alternative dissertation upholds the rigor of research and analysis while expanding scholar practitioners’ communication and storytelling skillsets. To be more inclusive, equitable, and practical, a documentary as an alternative dissertation can cultivate more connections between academics and communities.

Trust, Relationships, & Liberation

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Joint dissertations are a deliberate approach to antiracist systems change: simultaneously morphing the process of doctoral completion and supporting scholar practitioners to shift systems through their actions. At the School of Education at American University, scholar practitioners and chairs are learning together how the joint dissertation of practice can be a tool for systemic change within PK-12 and within EdD programs. Within this essay, we share our experiences and reflections as graduates, chairs, and collaborators.

A Black Gaze, a Freedom Dream and the Afrofuture

Marquita D. Foster, Andrea Pickens, India Cooley Williams — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

This article challenges the notion that alternatives are deficient or less substantial. In the Black-oriented homeplace, we situate alternatives as organic and ordinary, but also revolutionary and radical acts, where the Black gaze, freedom dreaming, and the Afrofuture serve as tools for reimagining possibilities and disrupting traditional forms and functions in the EdD landscape. We primarily focus on the methodological and theoretical decisions of Black women scholars, researchers, and graduate students because their decisions are many times culturally rooted, lack institutional support, and are reshaped during the dissertation process or co-opted in ways that strip their radicalness so that they pass through portals of Eurocentric masculinist acceptance. We also advocate for non-traditional graduate students whose unique experiences and needs often remain underserved in traditional graduate education. We argue that due to the knowledge-validation processes, new ways of knowing are deemed deviant or peculiar. However, despite questions around the legitimacy and quality of Black women’s knowledge production, their incalculable ways of knowing and acts of resistance against epistemic violence serve as emancipatory blueprints to guide the reimagining the EdD.

Flock Around and Find Out

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Inspired by bell hooks (1994), this dialogic inquiry documents seven scholars’ thinking and reflections on dissertations in practice. Our scholarship contributed to the knowledge base in our respective fields by and while embarking on dissertations authentic to us. We rooted in the literature, interrogated issues, collected data, and shared our findings; we just happened to do it through a podcast, song breaks, collaboration, sisterhood, multi-color writing, and non-linear and unique presentations. We didn’t defend ‘alternative’ dissertations; rather, we argue that ours exemplify what dissertations are meant to be. Identifying dissertations as either traditional or alternative ascribes a set of (ab)normative values to both knowledge and the production of knowledge that should be antithetical to dissertations.

Why CPED Needs a Philosophy in Practice

Peter J. Nelsen, Matthew Thomas-Reid — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

The authors employ a philosophical approach to model why a philosophy in practice dissertation has value in the context of EDD programs. Through literature review and philosophical analysis, the authors interrogate binary oppositions implicit in the discussion of theory, research, and practice. The authors out what the philosophy in practice dissertation might look like and finally consider Challenges and Implications for CPED & Member Programs.

Dangerous Dissertations

Star Brown, Kristen Proctor — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

The ever-changing educational environment calls for scholars and practitioners alike to trouble the current ways of seeing and doing dissertations and to invite conversations about doing dissertations differently. Alternative dissertations serve as an avenue for this type of critical work. We begin this article by providing an overview of the different dissertation genres and formats in Appalachian State University’s (AppState) EdD program and situating the concept of a dangerous dissertation within the alternative dissertation landscape. We frame the dangerous dissertation as an alternative approach to dissertation inquiry and share our experiences creating and supporting dangerous dissertations. Specifically, we discuss the professional anxieties voiced by students using dissertations as vehicles for critiquing their professional contexts and how faculty mentors can support students grappling with shifting professional identities. We conclude with an urgent call for more dangerous dissertations and guidance for faculty advisors supporting this type of critical work.