Ed Bengtson, University of Arkansas assistant professor of educational leadership, has been selected as a researcher for a national study of the redesign of the educational doctorate.

The study is supported by the Carnegie Program on the Educational Doctorate, of which the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas is a consortium member. The University of Arkansas joined the Carnegie program in 2011. The Carnegie Foundation is an independent policy and research center that focuses on improving teaching and learning.

It was under the leadership of Tom Smith, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions; Mike Daugherty, head of the department of curriculum and instruction; and John Pijanowski, associate professor of educational leadership, that the educational leadership program’s Doctor of Education was chosen to be the first doctoral program in the college to work on the Carnegie initiative, according to Bengtson.

"We are at the very beginning stages of talking about the Carnegie program principles and working through how transforming the Ed.D. will happen in the context of our program, our college, and our university," Bengtson said. "Our Ed.D. students are practitioners who are working as teachers, principals, system leaders, or other educational professionals. It is exciting to be able to work on transforming the professional doctorate to better meet their needs and to potentially have a greater impact on practice.”

The Carnegie Program on the Educational Doctorate, a consortium of 56 institutions, is working to restructure the educational doctorate to make it a more relevant degree for the advanced preparation of school practitioners and professional staff, one that is distinct from the Doctor of Philosophy degree, which serves to prepare researchers.

With a U.S. Department of Education grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Secondary Education, 18 teams of two researchers will travel to 21 institutions that are members of the Carnegie consortium. They will gather data that will:

• Document and evaluate change in the organizational structures of a set of graduate schools as they create new professional practice degrees, such as the Doctor of Education degree, for school and college leaders.
• Document and evaluate change in signature learning processes, learning environments, and patterns of engagement of faculty and candidates in Ed.D. programs that participate in the Carnegie consortium.
• Document and evaluate fidelity to a set of guiding principles developed in the first three years of the project.
• Disseminate lessons learned and best practices for the design and implementation of professional practice degrees to a new cohort of graduate schools of education.

In addition to his role on the research team this spring, Bengtson participates at two Carnegie program convenings and two additional Carnegie program meetings at the American Educational Research Association and the University Council of Educational Administration each year as the University of Arkansas representative to the Carnegie program.

More information on Carnegie program can be found at http://www.cpedinitiative.org/. Bengtson can be contacted at 479-575-5092 or egbengts@uark.edu.