Dissertation in Practice of the Year Award

Call for Submissions - 2025 Dissertation in Practice of the Year Award 

The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) is now accepting submissions from member institutions for the 2025 Dissertation in Practice (DiP) Award. This prestigious award is given to EdD graduate(s) whose DiP shows evidence of scholarly endeavors in impacting a complex problem of practice and aligns with the CPED Framework.

SUBMIT

Submitting nominees will be from an implementing or experienced program CPED member (definition of these phases may be found here). The Dissertation in Practice must have been successfully defended prior to the submission deadline and must have been defended between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025. 

Nominees are encouraged to review the CPED Framework © for guidance in preparing the submission. 

Submissions should include: 

1) Letter of certification to be completed by the graduate’s DiP Chair, authenticating that the application is the student’s own work, represents their dissertation accurately, and that the dissertation has been successfully defended. 

2) Full DiP title 

3) A blind, 14-16-page double-spaced synopsis of the DiP submitted by the graduate. (The student’s name, university, and other identifying information should NOT be included in the synopsis.) 

The evaluation criteria are: 

Explanation of the study’s Problem of Practice (PoP) (2 pages). 

• The PoP aligns with the CPED's Design-Concepts in which the scholarly practitioner blended "practical wisdom with professional skills and knowledge to name, frame, and solve problems of practice" using "a critical and professional stance with a moral and ethical imperative for equity and social justice.” 
• The PoP is framed as persistent and substantially contextualized and emanates from the scholarly practitioner's direct and lived observations with their context of professional practice. 
• Demonstrates reciprocity with the field and the community it seeks to serve. 
• Provides a logical explanation of the PoP and its defining and enabling conditions (e.g., empathy interviews, analysis of relevant data, cycles of research, systems map, fishbone diagram, or other evidence) that support the DiP inquiry. 
• Demonstrates alignment between the general larger PoP (e.g., historical, economic, anthropological, sociological lenes, and various learning theories) to the local context and conditions of the PoP. 

Explanation of significance of guiding questions and/or rationale (2 pages). 

• Inquiry question(s) (e.g., research questions or design challenges) and/or rationale are framed around knowledge that is acquired by experience and practice. 
• Inquiry question(s) (e.g., research questions or design challenges) and/or rationale are framed around issues of equity, ethics, and social justice. 
• Provides a logical rationale for how the selected theories align and support the research questions, problems of practice, and the innovation or intervention developed to meaningfully address the PoP. 

Explanation of the knowledge that frames the complex PoP: Knowledge was accumulated through traditional/ancient wisdom, and/or literature, and professional practice (2-3 pages). 

• Discusses ways in which the knowledge was used to frame the complex PoP. 
• Discusses ways in which the knowledge was used to inform focal patterns of action. 
• Discusses system of evidence gathering and meaning-making documentation of professional practice (e.g., needs assessment, system of consultation). 

Explanation of the rigorous, appropriate, and ethical methods of critical inquiry to address the identified complex PoP (3 pages). 

• Includes methods meant to respond to the complex PoP. 
• Includes methods used seek to establish, evaluate, and/or refine new procedures, structures, or practices. 
• Includes methods aligned within a particular professional and local context. 

Explanation of the impact on the PoP as derived from the applied research in action (2-3 pages). 

• A significant contribution to knowledge and practice in their professional context or more generally to scholarship within a discipline or field of study. 
• Clearly addresses changes relative to equity, ethics, and social justice. 
• Provides a description of the resulting professional practice product (2 pages). 
• Action plan, policy development, technical report that conveys process, progress or results for the professional context, portfolio, or creative performance. 
• Provides an explanation for next steps for professional practice (1 page). 
• Future impact and recommendations that seek to yield generative impacts on the practice of educational leadership with the aim of educational improvement. 

4) References (APA 6th or 7th ed. format) must be submitted separately (not included in the 16-page limit). 

Evaluation 

The 2025 CPED DiP Award Committee will evaluate the submitted DiP synopses based upon the components explained above. Submissions that do not include a nomination letter, the full DiP title, a blind, 14-16-page double-spaced synopsis, and a reference list will not be considered for the award. The rubric can be found HERE. 

Finalists 

Finalists will be notified in mid-August and asked to submit their full DiP for review. 

Award Committee members will draw on the criteria listed above in considering full DiPs, recognizing that submissions may vary widely and achieve distinction in many ways. 

The author(s) of the winning DiP will be invited to attend the October 2024 CPED convening where they will be recognized. The recipient(s) will be awarded a plaque and check for $500. The recipient(s) will be encouraged to submit an article for publication based on their DiP to the CPED journal, Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice (http://impactinged.pitt.edu). 

SUBMIT

Deadline: The completed submission must be uploaded to the CPED website no later than 11:59 PM EST on July 1, 2025. Finalists will be notified in late July or early August; winners will be notified in September. 

1. Remove all names of author and institution from submission. Identifying information of the submitting author/university will be known only to the DiP Co-Chairs for the initial submission until finalists are identified in order to maintain anonymity and objective evaluation by committee members. 

2.  Provide evidence to show that the Problem of Practice is persistent, contextualized, and embedded in the work of a professional practitioner (the three components of the CPED Design Concept). 

3. Reciprocity: Research should involve an essentially collaborative relationship between researcher and the research participants in which each contributes something the other needs or desires (Trainor & Ahlgren-Bouchard, 2013). 

4. Critical inquiry: Takes into account how our lives are mediated by systems of inequity such as classism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism (Marrais & Lapan, 2004).