Conference Agenda

This qualitative investigation examined the preparation and professional practice of forty graduates from four CPED-influenced EdD programs in the United States and Ireland, with a focus on the principles of collaboration and community—hallmarks of civic engagement and equity-centered leadership. Drawing on participants' experiences during and after their doctoral studies, we explore how these program design principles that are grounded in practitioner-centered educational reform shape graduates' capacity to lead transformative work in PK–12 and higher education settings. We examine how this model of doctoral preparation reflects historical shifts in education and illuminates possibilities for future-facing, justice-oriented leadership. This qualitative study’s research question was, How do PK-20 educational leaders who have graduated from CPED-influenced EdD programs embody the skills of scholarly practitioners?

Related Literature

The education doctorate (EdD) has long occupied an uneasy space in the ecosystem of graduate education, often overshadowed by its research-focused counterpart, the PhD. Over the last 18 years, however, the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) has led a national movement to reclaim and reimagine the EdD as a professional practice doctorate that prepares leaders to engage deeply with problems of practice, grounded in equity, collaboration, and community engagement (Author & Author, 2010). This reframing situates the EdD within a broader historical lineage of practitioner-led change in education and brings doctoral faculty into the change narrative through their efforts to advance and elevate practice-based doctoral education.

In CPED-influenced EdD programs, practitioners are prepared to use the tools of inquiry, research, and scholarship to better inform their leadership practice. Our larger study asked: How do PK-12 and higher education leaders who have graduated from CPED-influenced EdD programs embody the skills of scholarly practitioners? For the specific purposes of this paper, we narrowed our qualitative investigation to examine how forty graduates from four CPED-influenced EdD programs experienced two of the six CPED principles for program design which focused on collaboration and community during their doctoral preparation, and how these experiences shaped their leadership practices in PK–12 and higher education contexts in the years following their graduation. Below are the two principles along with some of the scholars whose work has influenced each:

• Principle Two: Prepare leaders who can construct and apply knowledge to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, families, organizations, and communities (Authors, 2014; CPED, 2009; Moll et al., 2006).
• Principle Three: Provide opportunities for candidates to develop and demonstrate collaboration and communication skills to work with diverse communities and to build partnerships (CPED, 2009; Moll & Gonzalez, 2012; Roth & Lee, 2006).

This study is anchored in the CPED Framework (Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate, 2016), and this paper focuses on the two principles for program design—collaboration and community. These are not merely structural features of EdD programs, but epistemological commitments to shared knowledge production, collective leadership, and engaged scholarship. They reflect a break from traditional, hierarchical forms of doctoral education and instead promote relational, inclusive, equity-minded approaches to learning and leading (Author, 2022).

In this paper, we argue that a CPED-influenced EdD program offers a compelling vision for the future of doctoral preparation that is grounded in historically-informed, justice-centered practice. Specifically, the two principles highlighted in this paper demonstrate how EdD preparation can and should be critical to fostering democratic engagement and civic professionalism (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Lee et al., 2021) in a time of increasing political division and educational inequity globally.

The work of leaders in K-12 education internationally is multifaceted including several responsibility areas (Fonsén & Lahtero, 2024; Rinne et al., 2016) and these leaders also constantly deal with various challenges. First, educational organisations’ complex operational environments globally and locally affect their work (Jäppinen & Taajamo, 2022). In the European context, examples of these phenomena include diversification, social polarisation, war, as well as challenges and threats caused by social media and AI. In the midst of these complex phenomena, education should successfully continue fulfilling its core mission – student learning – and school leaders are broadly responsible for ensuring this. Second, school leaders’ job descriptions have intensified (Wang, 2021). This challenges their experiences of work-related self-efficacy (Elomaa et al., 2023). To deal with these challenges for ensuring high-quality leadership in K-12 education, school leaders must possess high leadership competency levels. Relatedly, there is a need for building a topical understanding of leadership competencies needed in K-12 education today. This understanding is also a crucial basis for the identification of K-12 leaders competency development needs and for designing timely and relevant professional development support for them.

Although several previous studies exist on leadership competencies in education internationally, many of them focus on a specific competency or apply a competency framework that does not reflect a recent consideration of topical leadership competencies in education. However, the operational environments of educational organisations are constantly and rapidly changing (Jäppinen & Taajamo, 2022), resulting also in changes regarding which competencies school leaders’ need to possess. Thus, timely examination on leadership competencies is needed to address possible gaps in research: along recent changes in society and education, it is possible that educational leaders are currently required to possess competencies that have not previously been identified.

With the aim of constructing a topical understanding of leadership competencies in K-12 education, we conducted a scoping review. The review aimed at answering the following research question: What comprises leadership competency in K-12 education? We focused on formal leaders in K-12 education, covering specifically the continuum from early childhood education to general upper secondary education. Formal leadership positions include such roles as principals, vice principals and heads of units. The present study is a sub-study within a larger research project covering multiple perspectives to leadership in educational organisations. This sub-study specifically focuses on the competencies of formal leaders, since their competencies are crucial in enabling high quality leadership in educational organisations to ensure that these organisations successfully fulfill their core mission, student learning (Leithwood et al., 2020).

In our review, leadership competency refers to multifaceted aspects needed by educational leaders to lead effectively and successfully. These aspects include various kinds of skills, expertise and knowledge regarding leading oneself, the others, pedagogy and educational settings (Blömeke et al., 2015; Metsäpelto et al., 2022). However, in our review, we argue for separating the concept of leadership competency from its associated concepts, such as leader performance, identity and attitude. The aim is to clarify the complex concept of competency and to enable a reliable and agreed-upon approach to the review process among authors.

Aim: to contribute to the understanding of school principalship by applying what school principals do in everyday work to a conceptual model on professional competence.

Competence is a concept lacking conceptual clarity, and the academic community has not yet reached consensus on a universally accepted definition. (Salman et al., 2020). Originally, the term comes from the Latin word competens and was first recorded in 1797 (Etymology of ‘Competency’ by Etymonline, n.d.). In scientific literature the term was first launched by Robert W. White (1959). This was in the field of psychology and was at the time revolutionary because of psychoanalytic domination. White (1959) described competence as “an organism’s capacity to interact effectively with its environment” (ibid., p. 297). According to White (1959) every organism attains such capacity through self-activity, which means it is not there at birth and does not evolve through maturation.

In 1973, David McClelland (1973) launched a similarly for psychologists revolutionary idea, suggesting the testing of competency rather than intelligence, which was predominant at the time. McClelland (1973) understood professional competence as a personal trait or set of habits which leads to more effective or superior job performance.

Since then, scientists have developed and presented a wide range of conceptual models for professional competence. On the basis of a literature review, Guerrero and De Los Ríos (2012) categorised existing conceptual models of professional competence into five categories; 1) competence models based on the workplace, 2) competence models based on behavioural theory, 3) competence models based on business strategy, 4) competence models with a cognitive and motivational approach, and 5) competence models based on a holistic approach.

Research and reports describing what school principals actually do on a daily basis are frequently occurring in literature – data can be retrieved from for instance dissertations (Finnish school principals in Mäkelä (2007) and Saarukka (2017)), (international) reports (Darling-Hammond et al., 2022; Muta et al., 2025; OECD, 2020; Teig et al., 2024), and research (for instance research on effective, successful and turnaround principals (Bush & Glover, 2014; Leithwood et al., 2020; Lunenburg, 2010; Meyers & Hitt, 2017)). However, attempts of outlining the doings and beings of school principals on a more abstract level, in the form of professional competence, are scarce or even absent.

Research on school principals usually is occupied with the pedagogical leadership of school principals. Predominant paradigms in school leadership research are, according to a study of Gumus, Bellibas, Esen and Gumus (2018) distributed/collective leadership, instructional leadership, teacher leadership and transformational leadership, meaning the focus is on other features of and perspectives on school principalship than underlying professional competences.

For my dissertation (development of professional competence of school principals) it is necessary to have an idea of what professional competence of school principals conclude. This led to a process of reviewing, selecting, and applying conceptual models of professional competence on school leadership, in the end resulting in a competence model for school principals.