Can Doctoral Programs Train Public Social Scientists? A Case Study in Education Research

• In Event: 191 - Regular Session. Public Sociology

Abstract

Michael Burawoy’s call for public sociology yielded much debate on the value of such research and much discussion about how to conduct it, but little attention to developing a new generation of researchers capable of and committed to practicing engaged scholarship. This paper examines an innovative approach to doctoral education designed to cultivate in students the skills and commitment to practice engaged scholarship. We conducted a self-study of the internal processes of a multi-year collaborative research project intentionally designed to provide an alternative model for doctoral training at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The project involved two faculty members and fifteen doctoral students and included apprenticeship training in research methods as the team undertook a study of the processes community organizing groups used to improve quality and equity in public education. Data included minutes of project meetings, field reports, researcher identity memos, and in-depth interviews with all seventeen project researchers. We identify the ways the project developed the skills and commitment to practice engaged scholarship and we trace the impact on students, faculty and the research product. Unlike individualistic and hierarchical models of doctoral education where students learn to study people and institutions “from above,” we found that the project created a community in which participants formed a shared identity as scholars who will enter the field seeing themselves as part of a larger set of informed publics deeply engaged in the work of societal transformation.

Authors

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts-Boston

• Soojin Susan Oh, Harvard University

• Mara Casey Tieken, Bates College