EDD8030 moves from the theoretical foundations of EDD8010 and EDD8020 into applied investigation — requiring learners to obtain an organizational site, identify a genuine problem of practice, collect and analyze pertinent data, and collaborate with stakeholders to evaluate organizational needs. This is where the EdD program's practitioner-scholar model becomes concretely operational.
Continuous improvement models and inquiry cycles
Structured frameworks for investigating organizational problems
- Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles: EDD8030 covers the Deming-Shewhart PDSA cycle as a foundational continuous improvement framework — planning an intervention based on a problem analysis, implementing it on a manageable scale, studying the results systematically, and acting on what the data reveal (scaling, adjusting, or abandoning the approach) — emphasizing that improvement is iterative, not a one-shot implementation
- Improvement science: The course draws on the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's adaptation of improvement science to education, particularly the networked improvement community (NIC) model and the discipline of structured problem investigation that Anthony Bryk and colleagues developed in Learning to Improve (2015) — including driver diagrams, process mapping, and root cause analysis as tools for understanding the system producing current outcomes
- Site-based investigation requirement: Learners must secure an organizational site and complete all site-based assignments — meaning the inquiry is conducted within a real educational or organizational setting, not as a hypothetical exercise
Data and information literacy
EDD8030 develops the specific data literacy competencies educational leaders need to investigate problems of practice rigorously: identifying what data are relevant to a specific organizational question, locating and accessing appropriate data sources (student achievement data, attendance and behavior records, survey instruments, observational protocols, program evaluation data, demographic and contextual data), assessing data quality and limitations, and distinguishing between data that describe a problem's symptoms and data that illuminate its underlying causes. The course emphasizes that data literacy for educational leaders is not primarily a statistical skill set but a critical thinking competency — the ability to ask the right questions of the right data and resist drawing conclusions the data do not actually support.
Stakeholder collaboration and needs assessment
The course requires learners to collaborate with stakeholders in their organizational site to evaluate needs, recognizing that problems of practice are embedded in social and political contexts where different stakeholder groups (teachers, administrators, parents, community members, students) may perceive the same situation differently, have different priorities, and hold different assumptions about what constitutes a problem and what would constitute an improvement. EDD8030 draws on needs assessment frameworks, including the discrepancy model (Kaufman's Organizational Elements Model, which defines a "need" as the measurable gap between current results and desired results) to bring structure and evidence to what can otherwise become a politically driven conversation about organizational priorities.
Forming valid inferences and communicating findings
EDD8030 requires learners to document their investigation process and create a narrative that communicates findings to stakeholders — developing the practitioner-scholar competency of translating systematic investigation into actionable communication that diverse audiences can understand and use for decision-making. The course emphasizes the discipline of forming valid inferences from data: distinguishing correlation from causation, acknowledging alternative explanations, being transparent about data limitations, and presenting findings in ways that inform rather than mislead organizational decision-making.
EDD8030 assignments include site-based needs assessments, data collection plans, inquiry cycle documentation, and stakeholder communication narratives
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Frequently asked questions
The site-based requirement is not simply a logistical preference — it reflects a fundamental design principle of the EdD program rooted in the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) framework and the broader improvement science tradition that EDD8030 draws on, both of which hold that the skills of systematic organizational investigation cannot be adequately developed through hypothetical exercises because the most important and most difficult aspects of investigating problems of practice are precisely the ones that hypothetical scenarios eliminate. A hypothetical case study presents a pre-defined problem, pre-selected data, and a bounded context — the student's task is analytical but not investigative in any genuine sense, because the hardest parts of real investigation have already been done for them by whoever designed the case. In a real organizational setting, the investigator faces a fundamentally different and more demanding set of challenges: the problem itself is not clearly defined but must be identified and scoped through observation, conversation, and initial data exploration; the relevant data may not be readily available, may be incomplete or of uneven quality, may be controlled by different organizational actors with different willingness to share, and may require the investigator to design new data collection instruments rather than simply analyzing what is handed to them; stakeholders have their own perspectives, priorities, and political considerations that shape what they are willing to say, what data they are willing to provide, and how receptive they are to findings that may challenge their assumptions; and the organizational context creates ethical obligations around confidentiality, consent, and the responsible use of findings that a hypothetical exercise does not generate. The improvement science framework that EDD8030 draws on, particularly as articulated by Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, and LeMahieu in Learning to Improve, explicitly argues that improvement knowledge is fundamentally situated — it is generated through disciplined inquiry within specific organizational contexts, not through the application of abstract principles to hypothetical situations — and that developing the capacity for this kind of situated inquiry requires actually doing it, not simulating it. The site-based requirement also serves the EdD program's practitioner-scholar mission directly: most EdD learners are working professionals investigating problems in organizations where they already work or have access, and the site-based investigation in EDD8030 is designed as a preliminary, formative version of the kind of organizational investigation they will conduct at greater depth and rigor in their eventual doctoral project, meaning the course serves as both a skill-building exercise and an early-stage exploration of the organizational context and problem area the learner may ultimately develop into their doctoral project work.