ERIC Number: EJ1376167
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-May
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1477-9714
EISSN: EISSN-1479-7194
Available Date: N/A
Linking Assessments to Program Outcomes in Practitioner-Oriented EdD Programs: An Alternative to Comprehensive Examinations
Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, v29 n1 p25-40 May 2023
For decades, the field of education has been criticized for failing to distinguish between the PhD and EdD degrees. However, the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate has recently redefined the EdD as a professional practice doctorate and offered a framework for program (re)design that includes the generation and application of practitioner knowledge to identify, investigate, and solve problems of practice. This renewed focus on (re)designing EdD programs provides a timely segue into rethinking doctoral assessments in EdD programs. This document analysis demonstrates how one near-ubiquitous assessment, the comprehensive examination, can be reimagined to serve as a site for reinforcing practitioner-oriented program outcomes. This manuscript reports how an EdD program implemented alternative comprehensive examinations to support student growth toward a variety of practitioner-oriented program outcomes. The findings indicate that the alternative assessments fostered student growth in all program outcomes and allowed students to meet several purposes of traditional comprehensive exams while also demonstrating that other purposes of comprehensive exams are misaligned with revised visions for EdD education. The implications of this study are that EdD assessments should be aligned with program outcomes and that program administrators should abandon traditional comprehensive exams for assessments that support practitioner growth and development.
Descriptors: Alternative Assessment, Outcome Based Education, Program Design, Doctoral Degrees, Doctoral Students, Student Evaluation, Program Implementation, Alignment (Education), Benchmarking
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A