5   Dissertations in the Online Environment

The written dissertation is a relatively new feature of doctoral education. Prior to the early nineteenth century, doctoral degrees were fundamentally teaching licences and were awarded on the basis of a successful oral defence of an idea, or thesis, one that demonstrated a candidate’s command of logic. The situation changed after the Prussian philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt—the founder, in 1810, of the University of Berlin—proposed that doctoral education should place equal stress on research, thereby laying the foundation for doctoral degrees as we know them today (Willis, Inman, & Valenti, 2010). Although different adaptations of Humboldt’s model exist in American and European universities, the concept of the dissertation as a culminating experience that prepares graduates for university careers as teachers and researchers has remained relatively consistent; however, as has become apparent, not all doctoral graduates are able to find university positions, nor do they necessarily desire academic careers. Still, students striving for careers outside of academia are often enrolled in the same programs and complete the same types of dissertations as students preparing for academia (Willis et al., 2010).

Efforts are currently underway to differentiate between doctoral degrees designed to prepare professional researchers and those designed to prepare researching professionals, and the types of dissertations completed within these programs have been one of the most challenging components of this distinction (Belzer & Ryan, 2013). There is general consensus that dissertations must be equivalent in terms of rigour but different in terms of emphasis and topic (Maxwell, 2009). Many individuals advocate that dissertations completed by those working in practice should focus on a problem within that practice and should result in action-oriented outcomes with a positive influence (Andrews & Grogan, 2005; Archbald, 2008; Shulman et al., 2006). In this way, these dissertations focus on the “now what” rather than the “so what” (Belzer & Ryan, 2013, p. 199) of the research, making it less generalizable beyond a particular context but more relevant within it.

Although there is some consensus about the general attributes of dissertations completed by those in practice, there is less agreement about what these dissertations should look like and how they should be structured. Some advocate for dissertation formats that align closely with what practicing professionals are expected to produce in their careers, such as policy white papers, evaluation reports, curricular materials, or portfolios that explicitly align research and practice (Archbald, 2008; Maxwell, 2009). In fact, a review of professional practice programs affiliated with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) revealed varying structures and scaffolds for dissertations, including the following:

• emphasize a stance such as social justice (Professional Doctorate in Educational Leadership [ProDEL], 2012)
• promote a research genre such as action research (Wetzel & Ewbank, 2013),
• complete pieces of the dissertation throughout a program (ProDEL, 2012)
• encompass a team activity, with students making individual and collaborative contributions to a final document
• revolve around a common theme explored by most students (Marsh & Dembo, 2009)
• involve a team-based evaluation conducted for actual clients (Stacy, 2013)

Quite frankly, the diversity of ways in which dissertations for professionals were structured overwhelmed us as we planned what the dissertation would look like in the UF EdD EdTech. Given the wide range of contexts from which our students come (e.g., K-12 education, higher education, virtual schools, not-for-profit organizations, business, industry, and the military), we knew that many of the dissertation structures we found in our review of professional doctoral programs would not work for such a heterogeneous group. Thus, our first task was to explore our beliefs about dissertations for researching professionals in educational technology and determine how to align the dissertation process with our concept of the trifecta of theory, research, and practice.

OUR CONCEPTION OF DISSERTATIONS FOR RESEARCHING PROFESSIONALS

Although we respect other perspectives on the issue, we believe that the culminating experience for a terminal degree should be an individual activity that the student completes as a final exercise rather than one that runs throughout a program. We also believe that the student, in consultation with faculty (rather than vice versa), should select the topic for and method of the dissertation. These beliefs, however, should not be misinterpreted as the absence of scaffolding, mentoring, and peer support during the dissertation process.

We used these beliefs—coupled with what we learned from examining the dissertation approaches in other programs, studying literature on doctoral programs for professionals, and reviewing the goals for our program—to develop guiding principles for dissertations that align with our conception of the trifecta of theory, research, and practice. We began by developing guiding principles to be used during the dissertation mentoring process. After two iterations of the program, we analyzed the first twenty-three dissertations submitted to determine the extent to which the guiding principles were evident and to explore whether they were working as intended to scaffold the dissertation process (Dawson & Kumar, 2014). In the next section, we discuss each of these guiding principles and provide examples of how each has played out in the dissertations completed by our students.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR DISSERTATIONS FOR RESEARCHING PROFESSIONALS

Principle 1: Embed the Dissertation in Practice

The first guiding principle is that the dissertation should be embedded in the student’s professional practice. A major goal of professional doctoral programs is for students to influence their local contexts; thus, their dissertations should be focused on issues or problems within their contexts. Dissertations in the UF EdD EdTech tend to fall into one of three categories: directly embedded, indirectly embedded, or unembedded.

For directly embedded dissertations, students study something that is a natural part of their practice. For example, a district-level professional development specialist designed, implemented, and evaluated professional development opportunities related to using technologies that the district had recently purchased, while a university librarian studied her embedded librarian experience in an online course within her unit at her place of employment.

When producing an indirectly embedded dissertation, students study something that is not a natural part of their practice. For example, a school-wide technology director, with the goal of making recommendations about iPad implementation, studied how preschool students in her school used digital scaffolds, and an international centre director, to learn how to support faculty in her centre, designed blended learning modules on intercultural competence for one of the centre’s undergraduate courses.

The distinction between directly and indirectly embedded dissertations is associated with whether the dissertation is a natural part of the student’s practice. For comparison, one directly embedded dissertation involved an online-learning coordinator for a start-up public health organization interviewing main decision-makers about their perceptions of how the organization should use social media and developing an action plan for the organization based on his data. Determining how to use social media was a job responsibility for this student, and he met this responsibility while simultaneously completing his dissertation. In contrast, an indirectly embedded dissertation involved an advising specialist at a community college interviewing individuals in similar positions at other institutions about how they used technology to support quality academic advising. Although this was related to improving the student’s practice, the study was not a natural part of her practice.

Most dissertations completed in the UF EdD EdTech can be classified as directly or indirectly embedded, but a few are unembedded. For example, a professional development executive in a for-profit company studied how one of the company’s products was used, but his research was not for the purpose of informing his company or improving his work. In another situation, a community college faculty member studied barriers to using games and simulations in teaching but did not focus on her specific context or the community college context.

In general, students whose professional contexts are most closely related to practitioner work (e.g., teachers, professional development specialists) tend to complete directly embedded dissertations. These students seem to have the easiest time conceptualizing a personally relevant problem of practice and a potential solution. For example, a Grade 6 social studies teacher examined a unit involving digital biographies, while an instructor from a small college studied one of her courses.

Students whose professional contexts most closely relate to leadership (e.g., district technology specialist, administrator, centre director) tend to complete indirectly embedded dissertations. In some cases, their problem of practice is best resolved by learning from contexts similar to their own rather than by conducting research in their practice. For example, for the student who studied how other advisers use technology, it would not have been possible to do this in her context because there were no other advisers at her workplace. In other cases, the problem of practice relates to only a small part of the individual’s responsibilities. For example, an assistant superintendent studied a district-wide Digital Backpack program, and a nursing professor studied faculty perceptions of ethical behaviour in her college.

Most of the unembedded dissertations are completed by students who work in for-profit settings. In some cases, these students are explicitly denied permission to study within their practice, often because of confidentiality issues. Students who complete unembedded dissertations but do not work in for-profit settings often struggle with identifying problems of practice and/or gaining support for research within their contexts. Other factors also emerge while studying problems of practice: for example, we have had students change jobs in the middle of the program; decide they want to leave their practice and thus lack the motivation to study within it; and face leadership and/or visionary changes within their practice during the program. Ideally, all students would complete directly or indirectly embedded dissertations that influence their practice; however, the challenges described above that often result in unembedded dissertations are not unique to our program (Wetzel & Ewbanks, 2013).

Principle 2: Address a Problem of Practice Related to the Discipline

Most doctoral students who are simultaneously working in their profession can identify numerous problems in their practice. However, many of these problems may not relate directly to the discipline they are studying. It is important for students to recognize and study problems aligned with the discipline in which they are earning their degree.

Our students’ educational technology dissertations typically address problems of practice that fit into two categories. First, students whose practice is technology oriented tend to study problems related to preparing groups of individuals (e.g., virtual school parents, preservice teachers, K-12 teachers) to use technologies for specific purposes. For example, a director of a virtual school created and studied a parent-training program designed to help parents learn how to navigate an online environment to help their children. Second, students with specific content foci (e.g., art; nursing; international relations; mathematics, science, technology, engineering, and math [STEM]; social studies; physics) tend to design studies using technology as a tool to support teaching and learning in that content area. For example, a centre director used her knowledge of blended learning to design modules to foster intercultural competence among undergraduate business students. Unlike the embeddedness of the dissertations, whether a student is in a practitioner or leadership-oriented role does not seem to influence the category of problems that students identify and study. Instead, the content focus of their role tends to dictate their responsibilities related to technology and thus the problem of practice they choose to study.

Principle 3: Use Literature to Inform the Problem of Practice

We believe that using literature to inform practice distinguishes the approach of a researching professional from that of a typical practitioner. Specifically, our students tend to use literature in four ways: to rationalize the problem of practice, to frame the study, to support the design of interventions, and to discuss the implications of the study. Here, we discuss the first three ways, leaving the implications of the study to the last guiding principle.

All students use literature to rationalize the problem of practice, but the extent to which they do so varies. For example, some students have compelling evidence of the problem from their practice (e.g., 80% of teachers in the school report not being comfortable using the new interactive whiteboards, or school officials have just invested money in iPads but are unsure about how to use them to support problem solving). Other students are motivated by a real-world dilemma in their practice. For example, a middle school science teacher was deeply troubled by the number of girls she saw disengaging from STEM disciplines even though they had both interest and aptitude in these areas of study. Thus, she used the extensive literature on both females in STEM disciplines and online mentoring to guide her development of an online mentoring community to support STEM interest in middle school girls. Similarly, the student who wrote the dissertation about using social media in a start-up public health organization rationalized her thesis using the literature on the history and current practices related to social media and public health.

All dissertations use related literature to frame the study. In many cases, this results in what may be considered a traditional literature review (Boote & Beile, 2005). However, in a professional doctorate dissertation, the literature review is also often used to support the design of an intervention. For example, in a dissertation about embedding a librarian in an online course, a student wrote a literature review about the evolution of library support in distance education and the ways in which librarians support online students. In describing the design of her intervention, she drew upon theories in online learning, principles of instructional design, and literature on self-efficacy development in information literacy.

In many cases, content-specific literature is used to support an intervention design. In our dissertations, for example, intervention design has been supported by literature from library instruction and from education in physics, art, STEM, and nursing. In some cases, the literature-based intervention design is included as a separate chapter, which is common in dissertations involving professional development or course design. For instance, while designing an online mentoring community to support STEM interest in middle school girls, a student grounded her design in the theory of social constructivism and applied principles from STEM education, online learning communities, mentoring, situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship, and student-centred learning environments.

Principle 4: Use a Method Appropriate to the Question

Research questions follow naturally from the presented problem and the related literature that frames it, and methods follow logically from the questions. In our view, there is no such thing as inherently appropriate or inappropriate methods for dissertations that researching professionals complete; instead, the question drives the appropriateness of the method. Thus, dissertations that students complete in our program include a variety of methodological approaches, including the interview guide approach (Patton, 2015); the case study (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2009); action research (Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2009; Herr & Anderson, 2005); transcendental phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994); qualitative research (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2009; Rossman & Rallis, 2012); the CIPP evaluation model (Stufflebeam, 2000); and survey design and hierarchical linear modelling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Data-collection strategies also vary among our students and have included pre- and post-tests and surveys, observations and field notes, interviews, focus groups, log data, researchers’ reflective journals, standardized test scores, and artifact analysis. Likewise, data analysis techniques vary and have included qualitative coding, constant comparison, thematic analysis, content analysis, t tests, ANOVAs, multilevel modelling, descriptive statistics, and exploratory factor analysis.

In general, a dissertation that explores a problem of practice directly embedded in a student’s professional context (see Guiding Principle 1) often results in more evaluative questions. For example, one student who served as a district-level technology-integration specialist in a system that had recently purchased student-response systems and mobile interactive whiteboards for every secondary core academic classroom was tasked with providing professional development on this new technology. In her dissertation, which related to evaluating this professional development, she used Guskey’s (1998) five levels of professional development as her conceptual framework. She asked a question related to each level of Guskey’s model and used relevant data-collection and analysis methods for each level. She used the results of her study to inform subsequent professional development in her district, and the district now includes more robust evaluation as part of every professional development effort.

Conversely, a dissertation about an indirectly embedded problem of practice is generally less evaluative in nature. For example, a school-level technology-integration director who had recently purchased iPads for her PK-12 campus studied how preschool dyads use digital scaffolds and whether ability groups influence this use. She framed her study using literature about developmentally appropriate practice for preschool children, touch devices, scaffolding, digital scaffolding, ability grouping, and game-based learning. She used descriptive research methods (Knupfer & McLellan, 1996) to answer her research questions and to develop recommended practices for using iPads with young children in the school. Unembedded dissertations tend to be more closely aligned with what may be considered traditional dissertations because they do not stem from a problem of practice but rather from a problem in the literature and because they tend to include larger sample sizes. Given the range of possibilities, our students must understand a variety of methods, and we discuss our strategies for accomplishing this in the “Key Considerations” section below.

Principle 5: Demonstrate Rigour

Criteria for rigour vary depending on the nature of the study, but the criteria that are evident in dissertations completed in our program are transferability, credibility, confirmability, reliability, and validity. Similarly, we realize that students studying within their practice may face workplace-internal barriers, but we think the benefits for improving and transforming local practice outweigh those potential issues. We mentor students to recognize and address any potential issues. First, as part of a campus-based session, a representative from our college’s Office of Educational Research speaks to each cohort about the ethics of research. During this time, students ask questions about their situation and receive feedback from faculty and peers. Second, individuals in the local context and at the university must approve the Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol. For practitioners such as teachers, the school principal or the unit department chair must issue approval; for those in administrative positions, approval must come from a person in a supervisory role. For example, a technology director and an assistant superintendent may receive study approval from the principal and the superintendent, respectively. Third, the informed consent (and/or assent) forms included in the IRB process ensure that participants in the research, such as interviewees, are aware of the benefits and risks associated with participation. The IRB also addresses confidentiality and anonymity of participants and makes it clear that participation is voluntary. Fourth, the students must justify the relevance and importance of studying the problem of practice: in other words, it must be a problem that is worthy of asking for participation. Finally, we do not support studies with high-stakes consequences for the participants (e.g., promotion, merit raises, grades). Although our IRB office would probably not support such studies either, we aim to focus our students on improving or transforming their local contexts with what they learn from their study. It is unlikely that high-stakes consequences would accomplish this goal, because effective change is almost always a process.

Principle 6: Include Multi-level Implications for Professional Practice

Because the purpose of our program is to have researching professionals improve their practice through research, students are expected to exhibit reflective thinking by articulating how they expect their dissertation results to influence them personally as researching professionals, the local context, and the discipline as a whole. We use figure 2 to help them visualize the three levels of implications that must be evident in their dissertation.

Our analysis of the first twenty-three dissertations completed in the UF EdD EdTech shows that the more embedded a study is within professional practice, the more likely it is that students will include implications for the local context. Similarly, the more a method supports reflective data collection (i.e., action research versus hierarchical linear modelling), the more likely it is that personal implications will be included (Dawson & Kumar, 2014). Since that analysis, we have made a more conscious effort to ensure that all three types of implications appear in all dissertations.

Figure 2. Implications to be addressed in dissertations.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS

The dissertation is one of the most challenging aspects of designing and implementing an online professional doctorate. Our approach to addressing this challenge was to learn as much as possible about what others in similar programs were doing and to design a scaffold for writing the dissertation based on this knowledge combined with our experiences and perspectives related to doctoral and online education. We considered rubrics because other programs use them, but although we think rubrics have a place in assessment, our faculty members believe that they may be unnecessarily limiting for dissertations in our program, since our students come from such diverse backgrounds and contexts. Instead, we developed the guiding principles presented in this chapter as our criteria for a successful dissertation process.

These principles are used flexibly to guide dissertation writing, and there are cases (such as the unembedded dissertations discussed earlier) where not all principles can be used. Faculty members in our program also emphasize some principles more than others during their mentoring. For example, some of us place a very high emphasis on the three levels of implications (principle 6), while others put more emphasis on the sophistication of the methods used (principle 3) or the depth of the literature used (principle 2). This is not to say that the other principles are sidelined but that principles are operationalized in different ways by different faculty members. Given the individual and intimate nature of the dissertation mentoring process, any scaffolds developed must be flexible enough to give mentors and students autonomy to do what makes sense given the situation and context surrounding the dissertation.

Even though our guiding principles work reasonably well, we frequently find ourselves questioning them. We wonder whether they unnecessarily restrict our students in ways similar to what concerned us about rubrics or whether they are too simplistic. We ponder whether they inhibit ways of thinking that may arise if students and faculty were to discuss dissertation ideas without guiding principles. Even though we still have questions and continue to seek new ideas about the dissertation process in online professional doctorates, after using our dissertation principles with more than forty-five students, we are convinced that they are better than having no structure or guidelines at all. They provide a necessary and flexible structure within which students, mentors, and committee members can conceptualize dissertations that are distinct from but as rigorous as those completed in research doctorates. They also provide a mechanism for consistent communication across the geographic boundaries inherent in online programs and a common language with which to start conversations early in the program about what will be expected during the dissertation process. Furthermore, they serve as a mechanism which we can use to analyze and evaluate what we are currently doing and recognize where issues may arise during the dissertation process. We share some of these considerations next.

Continually analyzing and revising the dissertation process. Systematic analysis of the dissertations completed in our program has resulted in concrete changes to our guiding principles. For example, after analyzing the first twenty-three dissertations completed (Dawson & Kumar, 2014), we realized that our original principle about using literature was far too narrow in its focus on using literature to support the problem of practice. The revised guiding principle encompasses other ways in which students were using literature (i.e., to rationalize the problem, frame the study, and support the design of interventions). Similarly, our original guiding principle about implications was vague, and we noticed that many students did not include all three levels of implications (for the student, the context, and the field) in their dissertations. Thus, we modified this guideline to be more explicit. We have found that engaging in a process of continual research and reflection is critical to maintaining consistent and high standards for dissertations and to allow us to continue to question how to improve the dissertation process in our program.

Recognizing the critical junctures associated with the dissertation. Our work with over a hundred professional doctoral students and our continual analysis of both the processes and products associated with dissertations have led us to identify critical junctures in the dissertation process that have been relatively consistent across students and cohorts. These junctures, which are related to our guiding principles, are places where students predictably struggle or lose momentum or both. These are places where students can be encouraged to review previous activities and assignments, where the support of cohort colleagues might be instrumental, and where dissertation mentors can play a key role.

Identifying a topic. Dissertation topics for researching professionals are grounded in their local contexts. This means that they identify their dissertation topic in different ways from many students in research doctorates, whose problems are identified in alignment with their mentor’s research agenda or existing grant work. Most professionals in our program can identify at least a dozen problems of practice to study, some of which are not related to educational technology. In most cases, helping students focus on problems related to our discipline is relatively easy once they are reminded to think about their contexts from that perspective (see Guiding Principle 2). But the challenge of identifying a topic does not stop there. Faculty in our program have found that students tend to gravitate toward problems for which they are sure they know the solution (and, in some cases, which they think they have already solved). When students want to focus on such a problem, we remind them that the dissertation is not about proving something and that strong biases prevent researchers from conducting solid inquiries. In some cases, students eventually recognize that every problem has multiple potential solutions and can be seen from multiple perspectives, and the transformation we observe in their thinking during the dissertation stage is quite amazing. But in other cases, we have to encourage students to select another topic because we can see that their biases and gut instincts about particular problems will prevent them from producing robust dissertations. Interestingly, it seems that students who have had this struggle also struggled with many of the scaffolds we put in place to support scholarly thinking. These students are so embedded in their contexts and so sure that they know the answers that this confidence prevents them from critically analyzing many issues in their practice.

Other students want to focus on problems that are too big to address within the dissertation, so faculty members stress the idea that research is about precision. Essentially, if a problem is too big and too broad, it will not be solved in a dissertation, which will then contribute little of value to the student’s practice, context, or profession. Still other students want to focus on problems for which they do not have enough direct control to make a difference. Students often identify what they perceive to be systematic issues in their contexts, such as poor leadership, inadequate funding or resources, or interpersonal dynamics with adverse effects. Although these are real (and can sometimes be connected to our discipline), they are not problems that can addressed through dissertation work.

Faculty in our program find that dissertation topics with certain characteristics tend to be more likely to lead to successful completion. Students tend to be most successful when they select topics that address problems of practice related to our discipline about which they are passionate but open-minded and for which solutions or outcomes are not already known (i.e., when they are not trying to prove that a solution works). Inquiries that involve gathering multiple perspectives on a problem of practice in order to recommend potential solutions also tend to lead to successful completion. Topics that have a reasonable scope and clear boundaries and over which students have some degree of personal control, such as interventions that they implement or supervise, also tend to lead to successful completion.

Because identifying a dissertation topic with these characteristics is very important and often challenging, students must justify the relevance and importance of their chosen problem of practice to their mentor and committee members through a ten-page prospectus that outlines the nature of the problem, the proposed research questions and methods, the related literature and conceptual framework guiding the study, and the anticipated significance of the results to the local context and the discipline. In this prospectus, students also briefly describes any personal and professional biases they have related to the problem. Dissertation work may commence once all committee members approve the topic proposed in the prospectus. For some students, this requires only one submission. Others go through multiple rounds of revision before the committee is comfortable that the student faces a high likelihood of successfully completing the study.

Adapting to changing situations. Many factors can cause students to change their problem of practice before completing their dissertations. For example, some students have changed jobs in the middle of the program, and others have decided to leave their practice and thus were no longer motivated to study within it. We have also had students face leadership, policy, and/or strategic changes within their professional practice that influence the types of problems they can explore. The influence of these changes, regardless of the stage at which they take place during a professional doctorate, can be profound, but they are particularly disruptive when they occur during the dissertation phase. Although we do not have foolproof solutions to these issues, flexibility and empathy, along with the ability to be creative and maintain high standards, is essential when these situations arise.

Selecting and using research methods. Once our students identify a problem of practice on which to focus their dissertation, most of them effectively integrate theory and research to design solutions and/or interventions for that problem. However, many struggle with designing and implementing research to answer questions related to the chosen problem and with evaluating the effectiveness of the solution or intervention. One of the reasons for this is the fact that they receive little opportunity to practice implementing the research strategies they learn during their research courses. They conduct a few small-scale studies in other courses, but there is no guarantee that the methods used will be the same as for the dissertation, and there is no way to simulate the depth of detail and explanation needed in a dissertation. In fact, interviews with faculty from our program and from a similar program in our college revealed that most students do not understand the breadth and depth to which they need to explain their rationale for selecting particular methods, participants, and data-collection and analysis strategies, nor are they able to identify their biases or implement strategies for establishing rigour. Although these issues are discussed within coursework, faculty members in our program have come to believe that multiple conversations with mentors and peers and multiple revisions are needed during the dissertation process, given that the dissertation is the first large-scale research project most students have ever undertaken.

Creating a conceptual framework. We have found that aligning the problem of practice, relevant literature, research questions, methods, and implications can challenge students. As noted in previous chapters, faculty members in our program use conceptual frameworks to help students structure all elements of the dissertation study. We define a conceptual framework as “a system of assumptions, expectations, beliefs, theories and concepts that support and inform research” (Kumar & Antonenko, 2014, p. 55). It is unlikely that one theory will encompass the complexity of research in practice; therefore, having students assemble a conceptual framework that is carefully crafted to guide their study has been useful for helping students connect all elements of their study.

Connecting findings to implications. We have also found that students often struggle to transform their findings into useable implications. They typically have little difficulty relating their results to existing literature, but identifying how they relate to practice takes time and mental effort. We believe that there are several reasons for this difficulty, including the fatigue that students are experiencing by the time they write the implications, since they come in the last chapter of the dissertation. Sometimes, they are also working to self- or university-imposed deadlines, which can inhibit creativity and reflective thinking. These difficulties are mitigated by ensuring that the implications of the research for the student and the local context are explicit in the dissertation before the defence. We also highlight the importance of these implications to committee members, who then look for them when reviewing dissertations. Given the purpose of professional dissertations, we feel strongly that implications must be clearly written; ideally, they will result in action that improves the context in which the research was conducted.

CONCLUSION

We believe that a scaffold or support system is instrumental for ensuring that dissertations are aligned with a program’s vision and goals and for increasing the likelihood that completed dissertations are consistently of high quality. In our program, that scaffold consists of the guiding principles that faculty have developed. Students design their research studies according to these principles, and committee members use them to judge the quality of a dissertation. They also provide faculty with a road map to help guide curriculum development toward a culminating experience that aligns with program goals. We developed the guiding principles to reflect our belief that the knowledge, research, and scholarship of researching professionals in a professional doctorate should reflect the trifecta of theory, research, and practice.

Although faculty in our program are always looking for ways to improve our program, we believe that guiding principles provide structure while enabling autonomy and creativity in the dissertation process. Faculty members use the guiding principles to different degrees during the dissertation process: some reference them frequently and others rely on them more when issues arise during the dissertation process. While readers are welcome to use our guiding principles, we encourage program designers to consider a range of scaffolding options to determine what works best in their unique disciplines and contexts.