Doctor of Education - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the Ed.D. has equal parity status with the PhD. It is a research degree that requires students to make an original contribution of knowledge to the field. The Ed.D. is generally presented as an opportunity to prepare for academic, administrative or specialised positions in education, placing the graduates for promotion and leadership responsibilities, or high-level professional positions in a range of locations in the broad Education industry. Both the Ed.D. and Ph.D. are recognised for the purposes of appointment as a lecturer or professor in universities. The effect of an Ed.D. on a future career will depend on the area of study.

One study comparing the Eng.D., Ed.D. and DBA to the Ph.D. found that admissions requirements formally equaled or exceeded those for Ph.D. admission, yet all three degrees involved coursework and research (whereas the Ph.D. only requires research), and the coursework for the Ed.D. was presented specifically as a means of "enhancing general career development." The report claimed that the "orientation of these professional doctorates towards the development of professional practice and the production of professionally relevant knowledge through practitioner research clearly differentiates these programmes from conventional PhDs." An ESRC-funded report found that there appeared to be little impact of the development of professional knowledge on employment culture for Ed.D. participants, though there was "frequently considerable impact for the individuals themselves," and many of the Ed.D. students were employed in the public sector. Research by Scott, Lunt, Browne and Thorne (2002) has found that the difference between an Ed.D. and a Ph.D. can be somewhat overstated as students of both tend to follow similar courses of study and to research similar topics.

At Durham University, the process of earning the EdD consists of 6 courses (quantitative and qualitative research methods, thesis proposal, and four elective concentrations) that require 5,000 word research papers at the doctoral level and a doctoral thesis of 60,000 words that must make an original contribution to knowledge. The Ed.D. dissertation must reach the same level and be judged by the same criteria as the Ph.D. thesis. As such, the Ed.D. and Ph.D. at Durham have exact parity of degree status.

At the Institute of Education in London, the Ed.D. "is for experienced professionals from education and related fields who would like to extend their professional understanding and develop skills in research, evaluation and high-level reflection on practice" and the Ph.D. "is intended to enable to produce own thesis and to develop a range of research and other more generic skills." The Ed.D. requires a thesis of about 45,000 words and is usually related to the student's institution-focused study, while the Ph.D. thesis requires 80,000 words and must be suitable for publication in an abridged or modified form. The Ed.D. thesis is shorter because the doctoral student will have done other research work as part of their coursework, whereas Ph.D. students only write a doctoral thesis without coursework.

The University of Cambridge's Faculty of Education provides a useful comparison between their Ph.D. and new Ed.D. programmes for their particular university.