When Equity is Not Invoked: Transfer of an Ed.D. Program’s Equity Curricula to Generalized Practice

• In Event: Advancing The Teaching and Learning of Collaborative Continuous Improvement in Education

Abstract

Objectives: This exploratory qualitative study investigated how graduates from an Educational Doctorate (Ed.D.) program framed equity and Improvement Science (IS) in response to a novel leadership scenario. Specifically, the research sought to understand the kinds of improvement tools and equity frames alumni of an IS Ed.D. program draw on when encountering novel leadership situations. The study also aimed to examine how leaders’ equity orientations map onto their graduate learning experience.

Theoretical Framework: The study employed frame analysis as its theoretical framework. Frames are defined as cultural lenses individuals use to interpret the world around them (Cobb, 2017; Durand et al., 2022; Warikoo & de Novais, 2015), shaping what information they attend to and disregard (Cobb, 2017). This framework is particularly relevant for examining how program graduates draw on curricular learning in diagnosing equity issues and developing improvement plans in new leadership scenarios, thereby providing insight into the role of Ed.D. programs in shaping postgraduate practice.

Method: This qualitative exploratory study focused on graduates from a single Ed.D. program committed to centering equity and social justice, and affiliated with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) (Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate, 2020). Eight graduates from the 2022 cohort participated, the same year as a gubernatorial ban on "divisive" topics in K-12 schools in the region (IDRA, 2022). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews where participants were presented with a hypothetical school-based problem of practice, adapted from a case by DeMatthews (2016). They were asked to "think aloud" their short-term and long-term priorities and strategies, and subsequently prompted to revise their plans with an explicit equity lens. Interview transcripts were analyzed using open descriptive coding followed by inductive analytic coding of emergent themes (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Deductive codes based on Improvement Science methodological components, including the six Improvement Principles and technical tools (Bryk et al., 2015; Hinnant-Crawford, 2020), were also applied.

Substantiated Conclusions: Participants frequently drew on Improvement Science principles, notably a commitment to collaborative, stakeholder-driven inquiry processes (Bryk et al., 2015), even if not explicitly labeling them as IS (Hinnant-Crawford, 2020). Engaging a variety of stakeholders in collective inquiry was a prominent action step, consistent with IS principles. However, when prompted with an explicit equity lens, the majority expressed confidence in their initial responses, with only one participant using the term "equity" prior to the prompt. Their equity frames largely fell into two categories: addressing school-level outcome data (e.g., academic achievement and behavior) and building relationships, school culture, and diversity. A smaller group questioned whether an equity issue existed at all, narrowly defining inequity as within-school racialized disproportionality.

Significance: The study revealed a tendency for leaders to view the community as an instrumental asset for improvement but not necessarily through a consistently asset-based lens. While committed to engaging stakeholders, some leaders exhibited deficit-based language, which raises concerns about the democratic nature of collaborative inquiry (Eddy-Spicer & Gomez, 2022; Sondel et al., 2022).

Authors

• David Albert Rodes Trautman, University of California - San Diego

• Maxwell Yurkofsky, Radford University

• Randy W. Hetherington, University of Portland