Mentoring the Consultancy Project: Lessons in Collaboration and Research

College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Wist Annex 2 Room 131, 1776 University Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96822. Tel: 808-956-8002; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: https://coe.hawaii.edu/research/coe-publications-reports

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Mentors; Postsecondary Education as a Field of Study; Doctoral Dissertations; Consultation Programs; Student Experience; Student Projects

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This article examines a dissertation program at an higher education institution. The consultancy project is the first of two key projects that candidates in the EdD program are required to complete. It provides students opportunities to apply research and leadership skills to a real-world problem of practice in a collaborative venture with schools and community organizations. The goal of the consultancy is to provide clients with a set of advisory recommendations based on a doctoral level inquiry into an agreed upon problem of practice. The idea of professional practitioners and graduate faculty collaborating to support student consultancy groups emerged at an early point in the planning of the EdD degree in Professional Educational Practices at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. The second major project in the program, the dissertation of practice, also includes practitioner mentors who sit on students' dissertation committees. The experience of the mentors for cohort I consultancies helped to refine the role for cohort II mentors. Students in cohort I included school principals and academic division deans, teachers with some administrative duties, university and college program directors, and independent school heads. Cohort I students came from, in roughly equal proportion, public and charter schools, independent schools, universities and community colleges, and the Kamehameha Schools. as informed the decisions for cohort II on these questions. There were four objectives identified in the rubric for assessment of consultancy projects developed by the faculty and mentors: (1) working collaboratively to solve problems and implement plans of actions; (2) applying research to bring about improvements in practice; (3) reflecting critically and ethically on matters of educational importance; and (4) developing a broad interdisciplinary perspective on the project.

ERIC

2018

EJ1170639