Reimagining Graduate Education: The Doctor of Arts Degree and the Formation of the Scholarly Teaching Identity

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 11:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Division J Section 6: Roundtable 5

Abstract

This paper session examines the Doctor of Art degree as a historically significant and conceptually generative model for reforming doctoral education in the US. Emerging between 1960 and 1972 as a pedagogically oriented alternative to the Ph.D., the D.A. foregrounded teaching as central to scholarly identity. Drawing on historical and curricular analysis, the session introduces the Double Helix Model of Doctoral Identity Formation to conceptualize the integration of research and teaching. Through systematic analysis of primary and secondary documents, the study reconstructs the D.A.’s curricular logic, explores its marginalization, and argues for its relevance today. The session aims to provoke critical dialogue on the structural privileging of research, the formation of scholarly teaching identities, and the purposes of doctoral education.

Author

• Kirsten Tekavec, Pennsylvania State University