The School of Education’s Doctoral Program (Ed.D.) in Educational Leadership at the University of Washington Tacoma aims to cultivate leaders who incorporate transformative approaches to imagine and build sustainable, adaptive, and responsive educational structures and systems.

As the culminating project of this program, the Dissertation in Practice is an intensive application of a field-based analysis and/or implementation of a structural change project related to the Ed.D. student learning goals. The dissertation typically requires scholarly inquiry that reflects sustained thinking around a theoretical framework, literature-based problem, and related set of activities (e.g., program implementation or applied research methods) that are documented in the form of a written dissertation in practice. Each student conducts the Dissertation in Practice under the guidance of a supervisory committee which approves the completed dissertation.

Submitters have the option of establishing an embargo that restricts access to certain users for a period of 1, 2, or 5 years. If you’re affiliated with UW, login with your NetID using the link in the upper right corner in order to access all works currently available to view. Beginning in 2029, Dissertations in Practice will be submitted by Ed.D. graduates to ResearchWorks on an annual basis.