LEAD 6001 Module 1 Scholar-Practitioner Identity Paper Example

Clinical Coordinator, Beginning Scholar: Defining the Scholar-Practitioner and Locating Myself on the Continuum at the Start of an Ed.D. in Nursing Education

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD6001: Introduction to Advanced Studies

Module 1 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 12, 2026

Introduction

For eleven years I have arranged clinical placements for a composite baccalaureate nursing program in middle Tennessee: 310 students a year, nine hospitals, two long-term care companies and a county health department. I solve problems for a living. I do not, at present, study them. This paper defines the scholar-practitioner from published sources, explains why the idea sits at the center of a professional doctorate such as the Ed.D. and places me honestly on the path between practitioner and scholar at the start of my program. It ends with the questions from my own practice that I hope doctoral study will help me answer.

What a Scholar-Practitioner Is

The term describes a professional who works in two directions at once: using research to improve practice and using the problems of practice to generate new knowledge. Wasserman and Kram (2009) interviewed 25 people who identified with the role and found that they shared two primary tasks, generating new knowledge and improving practice, but differed in how they balanced them depending on where they stood on what the authors called a scholar-practitioner continuum. Some leaned toward academic research and treated practice as the place their findings would be tested; others leaned toward practice and drew on research when a problem demanded it.

This definition matters because it rejects the idea that a person must choose. A clinical coordinator who reads research on placement models and changes her scheduling as a result is acting partly as a scholar; a professor who runs a placement pilot in her own program is acting partly as a practitioner.

Why the Idea Anchors the Ed.D.

The education doctorate has been redesigned in many institutions around this identity. Perry (2015) described the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate, a consortium of schools that set out to distinguish the Ed.D. from the research-focused Ph.D. by preparing scholarly practitioners who apply research to problems of practice, generate knowledge from that work and act as stewards of their profession. The dissertation in such programs often takes the form of a study of a problem in the student's own setting. For a nurse educator, that means the doctoral years are meant to change how I work while I am still doing the work, not only after I graduate.

Where I Stand Now

Measured honestly against the continuum, I sit near the practitioner end. My expertise is real but tacit. I know which hospital units will take a Saturday clinical group, which managers will quietly cancel and which preceptors produce confident students. Almost none of that knowledge is written down, tested or connected to research. When placements collapse, I solve the problem by phone, and the solution lives in my memory rather than in any form another program could use.

There are scholarly habits to build on. Two years ago I tracked placement cancellations in a spreadsheet for a full academic year because I suspected that weekend placements were canceled more often than weekday ones. They were: 18% against 6%. I presented the finding to the dean, and the program shifted two weekend groups to weekday evenings. I did not search the literature first, did not consider why the pattern existed and did not share it beyond my building. The instinct to count was there; the habits of a scholar were not.

Questions From My Practice

The scholar-practitioner begins with questions that matter in practice. Three have followed me for years. First, why do some units accept students reliably while similar units in the same hospital cancel repeatedly? Second, does the type of placement, a dedicated education unit, a traditional instructor-led group or a one-to-one preceptorship, change how prepared students feel and perform in their first year of practice? Third, how much faculty time does each placement model cost, and does the most expensive model produce the best graduates? Each is a practical question that I cannot answer from experience alone, and each could become the seed of a doctoral study.

What Will Have to Change

Moving along the continuum will require three changes in how I work. I will need to read research as a habit rather than when a crisis demands it, starting with a weekly hour in the nursing education journals. I will need to write down what I know, beginning with a log of placement decisions and their results, so that my tacit knowledge becomes data. And I will need to tolerate slower answers. A practitioner fixes the canceled Saturday group by Friday afternoon; a scholar asks why Saturday groups are canceled and accepts that the answer may take a year. The Ed.D. asks me to do both, and to know which mode a situation calls for.

Risks in the Transition

Two risks are worth naming at the start. The first is that practice will crowd out scholarship. My job does not slow down during exam weeks or holidays, and placement emergencies arrive with no warning. The second is the reverse: that doctoral study will make me impatient with practice, more interested in what the literature says than in the student who needs a placement tomorrow. Wasserman and Kram (2009) found that people in the role often felt pulled between the two worlds, and that tension seems likely in my case as well. Naming the risks now lets me plan for them, which the remaining modules of this course will help me do.

What Will Keep Me Going

Many people who start a doctorate do not finish it, and the reasons are rarely intellectual. Spaulding and Rockinson-Szapkiw (2012) asked doctoral candidates what they credited for their persistence, and the answers centered on personal motivation and on support from family, friends and faculty rather than on academic ability alone. That finding fits my situation. My husband has agreed to take over Tuesday and Thursday evenings with our two teenagers, and my dean has offered to shift my summer schedule so that I can write in the mornings. I have also asked a colleague who finished her doctorate three years ago to meet with me once a month, not to advise me on content but to remind me that the middle of a doctorate feels slow for everyone.

Motivation is the other half. Mine is concrete: the program loses about one in eight scheduled placement days to cancellations, and each lost day falls on a student who is already anxious about clinical hours. If doctoral study helps me understand and reduce that loss, the work will be worth its cost in evenings and weekends. Writing that reason down at the start is a small act of planning; on a tired night in the third year it may be the sentence that keeps me at the desk.

Conclusion

A scholar-practitioner improves practice with research and builds knowledge from practice. I begin the Ed.D. with deep practical knowledge, a single spreadsheet that hinted at what scholarship might add and three questions that matter to my program and to others like it. The task of the coming years is to move along the continuum without leaving practice behind, and to turn what I know by memory into something other programs can read, test and use.

References

Perry, J. A. (2015). The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 47(3), 56-61. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2015.1040712

Spaulding, L. S., & Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J. (2012). Hearing their voices: Factors doctoral candidates attribute to their persistence. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 7, 199-219. https://doi.org/10.28945/1589

Wasserman, I. C., & Kram, K. E. (2009). Enacting the scholar-practitioner role: An exploration of narratives. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(1), 12-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886308327238