Supporting researching professionals: EdD students’ perceptions of their development needs

ABSTRACT

A Doctorate in Education (EdD) is an established alternative to a Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD). However, frameworks in use to support doctoral study in the UK are focused mainly at PhD students and their associated needs and do not address the specific requirements of students who are often working full time and undertaking research into their professional context. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to report on a Researching Practitioner Development Framework (RPDF) which has been developed to meet the specific professional development needs of EdD students. We describe the theory which underpins the overarching structure of the RPDF and report on a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with nine EdD students, which informed its content. Future research is planned to evaluate the implementation of the RPDF alongside existing EdD programme resources, and its role in supporting the professional development and research impact of EdD students.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctorate in education (EdD)
• professional doctorate
• doctoral education
• researching practitioner
• professional development framework

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alan Floyd http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2008-7831