A Curriculum Model for Administrator Preparation and Continuing Professional Development

Reviews the current debate in the USA concerning the general dissatisfaction with administrator preparation and resulting tensions between the award of the PhD versus the EdD, with a preference for the award of the latter articulated by critical observers of the profession. Design considerations are highlighted for the implementation of EdD curricula in Australia, where the professional doctorate is now being offered at a number of universities. Implications are drawn from the US experience regarding the need to legitimate the EdD as a valued qualification of standing in its own right and clearly focused on meeting the needs of practitioners. Describes a curriculum process model, initially developed at the University of Texas at Austin, with the potential and capacity to guide and inform university-based administrator preparation as well as on going professional development over the course of a career span of intermediate length. Concludes that appropriate models are needed which gave shape and form to a professionally oriented EdD, abstracting from relevant theoretical principles and derived from a knowledge base that can be justified on its own terms.