Are you a teacher or professional educator? It’s a noble calling to mold and shape the future leaders of tomorrow. Teaching can be a rewarding, fulfilling, and satisfying career, and you won’t regret letting people around the dinner table know what you do for a living.
If you’re a teacher or educator and you’re considering further study, such as a Doctorate-level qualification, you might be dissuaded by the need to write a dissertation. The good news is that there are now practice-focused qualifications that are changing the postgraduate game of education study. For working professionals, pursuing an online EdD with no dissertation can offer a rigorous, practice-oriented path to leadership without the traditional research burden.
What is an EdD Program?
An EdD program, or Doctor of Education, is a professional doctoral degree designed for people who are considering pursuing leadership roles in education, such as school administrators, superintendents, curriculum specialists, or higher education leaders.
Unlike a traditional PhD in Education, which typically focuses on academic research and theoretical contributions to the field of education, the EdD emphasizes the practical application of research to address real-world problems in educational settings.
An EdD program often includes a range of coursework in leadership, policy, organizational change, and applied research methods, and some programs don’t require a dissertation or research project to complete them.
It’s predominantly geared toward experienced educators or professionals who are looking to advance their careers by improving educational systems and outcomes through informed leadership and innovation, and can be an excellent way to level up your education career.
The curriculum of an EdD program will generally focus on providing students with the required management, administration, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills they will need to make a huge impact in the fields of K-12 and higher education in meaningful and powerful ways.
The research skills developed in such a program will see students hone their practice skills and obtain the knowledge focused on enabling graduates to fulfill roles as higher-education faculty members, educational leaders in senior and management positions, as well as work as policymakers and specialized researchers.
Prerequisites for a doctorate in education typically include some graduate work along with several years of teaching or other educational professional experience. EdD programs usually also require candidates to have a master’s degree (or, at a minimum, a bachelor’s degree), and some programs may also require satisfactory GRE scores.
Balancing Academic Depth with Practical Application
In a practical EdD program, academic depth and rigor for students of such a qualification are achieved through intensive coursework in domains such as educational theory, leadership, research methodology, policy analysis, and ethics.
Students of EdD programs will engage with scholarly literature on education, learn to analyze complex issues and quandaries critically, and gain the tools required to conduct original research. This ensures that students develop a strong theoretical foundation that can be translated into practical application, and they will also learn the ability to think deeply and systematically about education, which has flow-on benefits to their career.
At the same time as obtaining this theoretical grounding, the EdD is also based on practical application. Students of the program are encouraged to connect their studies to their professional contexts, whether that is in K–12 schools, higher learning, or other educational organizations such as vocational schools or specialist schools.
Through this blend of theory and practice, the EdD equips graduates not only to understand educational theory but to utilize that knowledge to lead change, inform policy, and improve practice in tangible and lasting ways. This is a great way to progress your educational career through a Doctorate-level qualification.
Making Advanced Degrees More Accessible
PhD Dissertations can be anywhere from 70,000-100,000 words.
For a busy teaching administrator or senior educational role, this is a massive time investment in order to acquire a Doctorate-level qualification. It is not practical or possible for many people, especially if they continue to work while pursuing a Doctorate.
As such, many people who may aspire towards this level of postgraduate qualification instead decide not to pursue it, as the time commitment is simply too much and is unrealistic for a busy professional.
At the same time, practice-focused EdD programs remove the need for a Dissertation. Instead, they are focused solely on practice, grounding theory in real-world applications that can be easily translated into tangible, real-world situations.
This way, this advanced level of degree is far more accessible for people, especially if they remain in their teaching or education administration roles while pursuing the degree. People can remain working, study part-time, and don’t have to worry about the massive time and effort that a Dissertation requires. You get to obtain a Doctorate, with practice-focused study instead of research and writing.
Practice-focused EdD programs are changing the game for those seeking doctoral-level qualifications in education. With a practice-focused degree, you can skip the heavy Dissertation and instead become PhD-qualified through practical application of research and theory.
