“Reclaiming” Special Education’s Professional Practice Doctorate: Strengthening the Pipeline of Special Education Leaders

In 2006, Schulman and colleagues made a call to “reclaim” education’s doctorate (i.e., the EdD) by developing a robust professional practice doctoral degree with a distinctive scholarly base. Separate from its more traditional and research-intensive counterpart (i.e., the PhD), the EdD is intended to be more specifically tailored to and focused on skills necessary for enhancing practice. In this conceptual article, the authors argue that “reclaiming” special education’s professional practice doctorate—especially amid times of great workforce instability—serves an important and often overlooked need in terms of developing and sustaining the pipeline of special education leaders. They discuss the role of the EdD student as a scholarly practitioner and “credible insider,” illustrating how they are uniquely positioned to enact local change and build or strengthen the school’s capacity through improvement science. Recommendations for multiple impacted groups will also be addressed.