1. Alan Davis
Nancy Leech
University of Colorado Denver

2. Initial Guiding Questions
 What skills and knowledge regarding
inquiry and evidence do effective
education leaders use?
 What skills and knowledge regarding
inquiry and evidence do EdD candidates
need?
 How can these best be acquired and
demonstrated in a three-year program of
preparation?

3. Focus Group Findings
 Leaders don’t conduct research, but they
request and use data presented by others
 Annual Cycles of Data Collection &
Reporting by schools, school districts,
community colleges, universities, state
agencies
 Evaluation studies addressing priority
concerns, new practices
 Informal information gathering
 Research summaries re “best practices”

4. Using data systems in decision
making
 What questions can be asked of data?
 Correlation vs causation, alternative
explanations
 Growth vs Status
 Interpreting school comparisons
 Interpreting trends over time
 Leading vs lagging indicators
 Disaggregating and “digging down”

5. Initiating inquiry in response to
problems and innovations
Example: K-16 Pipeline
 Transitions (6th grade, 9th grade, first year
college)
 Identifying and supporting high risk students
 Evaluating Ninth Grade Academies
 Comparing high schools by 9th grade course
failure rates
 Examining low graduation rates in higher
education
 Studying core courses, developmental courses
in community colleges and universities

6. Discussion
 What skills and knowledge regarding
inquiry and evidence do effective
education leaders use?

7. What skills and knowledge regarding inquiry and
evidence do EdD candidates need?
 Most CPED institutions require a dissertation as a
capstone demonstration
 Award winning dissertations adhere to 5-chapter
format with formal review of literature,
methodology, and findings chapters
 Expectation is to conduct empirical research on an
applied problem of practice
 Implication is course preparation in conceiving and
carrying out formal inquiry
 Statistical and qualitative methods of data
collection, analysis, interpretation

8. Discussion
How should we strike a balance between
 inquiry knowledge for leadership
 Inquiry knowledge to design and carry
out a dissertation

9. Approach at UCD
 Three course sequence beginning
summer at end of Year 1
 Evaluation and Action Research
 Course 1: Conceiving a study to guide
decision making and improve practice
 Course 2: Data collection driven by
evaluation purposes and questions
 Course 3: Data analysis, arriving at
conclusions from data

10. Course 1
 Conceiving a study to guide decision
making and improve practice
 Topics include:
 Development of evaluation and action
research questions
 Designing studies for maximum local impact
 How to involve stakeholders in the process
 Sampling
 Overview of institution review board process

11. Course 2
 Data collection driven by evaluation
purposes and questions
 Topics include:
 Involving stakeholders in designing data
collection tools for maximum local impact
 Developing rich description through observation,
interviewing, focus groups, video, artifacts, and
photos; surveys and documents
 Introduction to scale construction
 Assessing reliability and validity of data

12. Course 3
 Data analysis, arriving at conclusions
from data
 Topics include:
 Interpreting and analyzing archival data
 Coding data
 Communicating findings
 Discussion of political, ethical bias in
evaluation and AR
 Presenting data and findings to stakeholders

13. Discussion
 What sequence of inquiry courses will
best prepare students to both complete
the capstone project successfully and
function as effective educational
leaders?