0.1 Preface  (Page 2/3)

Our goals and purpose of this book are aimed at advancing understanding in areas relating to educational leadership and administration, and to enhance the capability and efficacy of university programs. We are focused on developing better methods of pedagogy and instruction to help bring about more effective academic and professional development programs for all doctoral students and faculty in educational administration. Finally, we strive to create more effective pathways and networks for exchanging new understandings and viable strategies among persons working to advance educational administration. The contributors collectively address numerous areas of the field related to the theme of better preparing school leaders in doctoral programs. Some of the specific topics include program accreditation, design and delivery, innovations in educational leadership, curricular and instructional improvement, dissertation conventions and writing, self-reflection and professional growth, social justice in leadership and learning, and mentoring theory and practice.

The topic of doctoral issues and challenges is timely, if not cutting-edge, in the educational administration field and literature. We agreed that it would be powerful to produce a document that exclusively focuses on the changing landscape of doctoral programs in our discipline, especially as they are emerging in more places and in non-traditional ways. Offering a broad, multi-disciplinary treatment of doctoral education is Golde, Walker, and Associates’(2006) Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education. This collection of essays, commissioned by the Carnegie Initiative, adopts a wide view of the doctorate in education. The authors attend to such broad-sweeping issues as the call to restructure EdD and PhD programs, fragmentation and division across fields, and scholarly inquiry in such areas as educational psychology. In contrast, The Handbook of Doctoral Programs in Educational Leadership attends exclusively to doctoral program initiatives and reforms in educational leadership/administration, and it is the first book of its kind. This handbook covers multiple doctoral programs from across the United States and a myriad of interconnected perspectives on the preparation of school leaders are articulated. The contributing authors are all experienced in leading programmatic changes in higher education contexts.

This handbook is an invaluable resource for aspiring doctoral students in educational leadership. The contributors provide information about program- and dissertation-related issues and offer an insider’s view of the culture of doctoral education, specifically in the area of educational leadership. Importantly, the book provides relevant information for professors and departments of education that are designing and re-designing doctoral programs. Further, it serves as an informational resource for state coordinating boards about issues that surround the development, implementation, and delivery of doctoral programs in educational leadership—new and existent. We have attempted to honor the solid foundations that have been established in the discipline while proactively shaping the future by documenting common understandings. We also strived to create unity and shared purposes but in the context of difference and idiosyncrasy—we welcomed different voices and perspectives, and urged faculty to write who represent various program niches.