Practices and Policies for Doctoral Education and Leadership

The vision for this special section on practices and policies for doctoral education and leadership developed in 2016 through conversations of the Board of Directors (then called a Steering Committee) for the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE). The GADE board members expressed concerns that there were few recent resources in the literature to guide the leadership of doctoral programs in social work education. Although GADE provides several resources to build the capacity of doctoral program leaders, including an annual conference, the aspirational GADE Quality Guidelines for PhD Programs in Social Work (Harrington, Petr, Black, Cunningham-Williams, & Bentley, 2014), a tool kit for new directors (Bay-Cheng & McMurtry, 2018), a resource page with timely topics on doctoral education (Bay-Cheng & McMurtry, 2018), an active electronic mailing list that is available only to PhD program directors, and the GADE Guide, an illustrative view of doctoral programs in social work (Lightfoot & Beltran, 2016). The board members recognized that specific published resources to provide guidance on doctoral program administration are not available and that no related articles have appeared in the social work literature over the past 10 years. Fortunately, the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE) was willing to work with us in partnership to offer a special section of the journal on doctoral education. Therefore, the aims of this special section of the JSWE are to provide timely and scholarly information to help faculty members improve the administration and leadership of doctoral programs in social work education. This special section includes articles that describe how to create, manage, evaluate, and sustain effective doctoral programs in social work, including important information on how to build the capacity of doctoral programs.

GADE’s membership comprises more than 90 doctoral programs in social work education in North America. These programs range from practice doctorate (DSW) programs to different varieties of PhD programs. The vast majority of doctoral programs are research-focused PhD programs located in research-intensive universities, and the largest growth of doctoral programs in recent years has been in the DSW and online programs. Doctoral programs in social work are diverse and becoming even more diverse as new programs have entered the landscape. This growth and diversity means that all pertinent issues on administration and leadership cannot be addressed through the articles in this special section, but our intent is for the information provided to be broadly relevant to the current state of doctoral education in social work and provide a much needed update to the literature.

In our solicitation, review, and acceptance of articles for this special section, we did not differentiate among types of doctoral programs; instead, we accepted articles based on the juried peer reviews of those articles. Overall, we were highly pleased that so many interesting and timely articles were submitted. Based on peer review and the overall page limits of the special section, we selected five articles that we expect to guide the administration and leadership of doctoral programs. In addition, in light of the positive peer review of the other articles submitted for this special section, we recommended resubmitting some of them that were not accepted for future publication in the JSWE; thus, we hope the literature related to doctoral program education continues to grow.

The five articles in this special section are timely conceptual pieces and offer original research and specific recommendations for improving the administration and pedagogy in doctoral programs. In the first article, “Social Work Doctoral Program Administration: Current Status, Information Needs, and Capacity to Address Persistent Critiques,” McGovern and Zimmerman present information from a literature review and focus groups conducted at the 2016 GADE conference that identified specific priorities for doctoral education and administration. These priorities encompass the culture and climate of doctoral programs, the roles and needs of doctoral program directors, admissions, preparation of doctoral students, and specific student products such as dissertations. This is the first article in many years to gather this type of information systematically from the literature and from doctoral program directors and to address knowledge gaps concerning standards, policies, and current practices in doctoral program administration.

In the second article, “Doctoral Education in Social Work: The Decade Ahead,” Howard, Fraser, and Bowen offer a poignant conceptual piece with examples from the literature in higher education to exemplify the challenges of doctoral education leadership from the macro lens of current trends in higher education. These trends include the knowledge explosion, the corporatization of the university that changes the culture of faculty work environments, and the narrowing of knowledge created through the Grand Challenges and other research demands. The authors suggest that these trends change how social work doctoral students need to be prepared to enter their careers in higher education and further challenge doctoral program administrators to find better ways to address diversity, information literacy, and increasing demands for research preparation and productivity of students.

In the third article, “Investigating Diversity in Social Work Doctoral Education in the United States,” Chin, Hawkins, Krings, Peguero-Spencer, and Gutiérrez report the results from a literature review of published articles on underrepresented populations in social work doctoral programs. They found only six relevant research articles, most of which were qualitative studies. The authors’ analysis organized the research information from articles into categories of demographic trends, degree motivation, student barriers, existing supports, and career navigation. Conclusions discuss the surprising lack of information on underrepresented populations in social work doctoral education given the profession’s historic commitment to social justice. The authors also provide ideas for doctoral program leaders to improve the research on underrepresented populations in doctoral programs.

Cunningham-Williams, Wideman, Fields, and Jones, authors of the fourth article, titled “Research Productivity of Social Work PhD Candidates Entering the Academic Job Market: An Analysis of Pre- and Postadmission Productivity Indicators,” provide a case file review using 56 cases of students who graduated from a Research 1 university to examine preadmission indicators that predict student postadmission research productivity. This article offers doctoral program leaders advice on moving beyond the exclusive use of academic criteria (such as Graduate Record Examination scores) in doctoral admissions to other nonacademic criteria found in a student’s curriculum vitae or obtained during interviews. The authors propose a holistic admissions process that includes research productivity at preadmission as a significant criterion that promises to predict research productivity of students measured by the numbers of publications and conference presentations postadmission. This article encourages faculty leaders and administrators in Research 1 and other research-intensive universities to make use of this holistic admissions process when selecting students for doctoral program admissions.

In the fifth and final article, “Cultivating a Research Tool Kit for Social Work Doctoral Education,” Kainz, Jensen, and Zimmerman provide suggestions for pedagogy that will help students prepare and improve the rigor of their doctoral research training by students achieving skills and experiences consistent with a research tool kit. Examples are provided for how students can use this tool kit in courses, research experiences, and specialized workshops. The examples provided are geared toward intervention research, but the authors suggest that a tool kit can be provided for other types of research and encourage systematic use of readings and learning research concepts and methods across learning experiences.

The five articles presented here cover a wide assortment of topics, with converging themes addressed in complementary ways to provide important information for doctoral program administration and leadership. These themes include how to build the culture of doctoral programs; the roles and needs of the doctoral program director and related roles in higher education administration; the challenges faculty members face in higher education and what is needed to create a successful doctoral program in social work, given the current trends; the need to address social justice, diversity issues, and underrepresented populations in social work doctoral education; admissions concerns and needed improvements; and the changing landscape of student preparation, including the need for increased research productivity and specific ways to improve research training. A predominant conclusion across all articles is the lack of research available to guide current practices in doctoral program education and the outdated state of statistical data and information on doctoral education. We hope this special section of the JSWE serves as a catalyst toward future efforts to improve the information on doctoral program administration and leadership in social work education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cynthia Franklin

Cynthia Franklin is Associate Dean for Doctoral Education and Stiernberg/Spencer Family Professor in Mental Health at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin.

Elizabeth Lightfoot

Elizabeth Lightfoot is Director of the Doctoral Program and Professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota.

Sheryl Zimmerman

Sheryl Zimmerman is University Kenan Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Research Faculty Development at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.