EDD9951 asks EdD candidates to identify a genuine 'problem of practice' — a real, significant, and locally-grounded challenge in their educational context, not an abstract topic disconnected from an actual school, district, or institution.
Identifying a genuine problem of practice
EDD9951 requires students to identify a problem of practice grounded in their own educational leadership or teaching context — a specific, significant gap between current practice and desired outcomes, supported by local data (student achievement data, program evaluation findings, stakeholder feedback) rather than a broad, generic issue pulled from national headlines about education.
Organizational context and stakeholder assessment
The course requires assessing the specific educational organization's readiness for change — existing resources, competing initiatives, and key stakeholders (teachers, administrators, families, community members) whose support will shape what's actually achievable. This assessment prevents students from designing an idealized improvement project disconnected from their institution's real constraints and culture.
Key topics in EDD9951
- Identifying a genuine, locally-grounded problem of practice in an educational setting
- Using local data to establish the problem's significance and scope
- Assessing organizational readiness for change in schools, districts, or educational institutions
- Stakeholder mapping specific to educational contexts: teachers, administrators, families, community
- Distinguishing a genuine problem of practice from a broad, disconnected educational trend
- Initial feasibility analysis given the institution's actual resources and constraints
Working on identifying your EdD problem of practice or organizational assessment?
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Worked example: grounding a problem of practice in local data
- Broad, disconnected framing: "Chronic absenteeism is a national education problem"
- Locally-grounded problem of practice: "Chronic absenteeism among 9th-grade students at [specific high school] has increased 22% over three years, disproportionately affecting students in the school's credit-recovery program"
- Why it works: The locally-grounded version is specific, evidenced by the student's own institutional data, and scoped to a population and context where the eventual EdD project could realistically produce a measurable improvement
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EdD problem of practice identification and organizational assessment assignments.
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Frequently asked questions
The EdD is a practice-focused doctorate, meaning its improvement projects are expected to address genuine, specific challenges within the candidate's own educational context, using that institution's own evidence to establish significance — a broad national trend, while real, doesn't tell you whether or how it specifically manifests at a particular school or district, and an improvement project designed around a generic national narrative rather than local evidence risks addressing a problem that doesn't actually reflect the specific dynamics of the candidate's own institution. EDD9951 requires local data grounding because a well-scoped problem of practice needs to be both genuinely significant and specific enough that the candidate, working within their own institutional authority and relationships, can realistically design and implement a meaningful improvement effort — which requires starting from what's actually happening in that specific place, not a general assumption based on broader trends.
An educational improvement project, no matter how well-evidenced the underlying problem, depends entirely on the specific school or district's willingness and capacity to support meaningful change — competing initiatives, limited resources, leadership turnover, or a culture resistant to a particular type of intervention can all determine whether a proposed project has any realistic chance of being implemented and sustained. EDD9951 requires this assessment early, alongside problem identification, because an EdD project is fundamentally applied and dependent on organizational buy-in — unlike purely academic research that can proceed regardless of any single institution's specific readiness, an EdD improvement project requires genuine organizational capacity to execute, making readiness assessment a co-equal consideration alongside identifying a significant problem, not an afterthought to address only once the problem is already finalized.