Scaffolding the Language of Power in Academia Series
Scaffolding the Language of Power
An Apprenticeship in Writing the Dissertation in Practice
7" x 10"
Language: English
Language: English
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Published: October 2026
9781975509965
$79.95
Scaffolding the Language of Power:
An Apprenticeship in Writing the Dissertation in
Practice
extends the interactive and supportive approach of the original Scaffolding the Language of Power to the unique genre demands of the Dissertation in Practice (DiP), the capstone of the Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED)-aligned Education Doctorate. Like its predecessor, the book is grounded in three interconnected commitments: doctoral writing as social justice, as genre, and as scaffolding. However, in this edition, original author Kathryn Strom teams up with CPED Executive Director Jill Alexa Perry to reimagine that framework for scholarly practitioners with professional knowledge, practical wisdom, and contextual change agendas that are central to the work of the dissertation.
The book’s unique design features stem from our understanding of the DiP as a distinct form of doctoral inquiry oriented toward understanding, improving, and leading change within a specific practice context and in service of particular communities. Accordingly, this volume emphasizes the dual-audience nature of the DiP: although students write to their committee first, DiP work simultaneously needs to serve a practitioner/professional community. To achieve that, for example, scaffolds for organization, headings, and topic sentences are framed not only as tools for writing, but also for producing writing that is accessible to multiple audiences beyond academia. Second, the book maintains a practice-to-improvement arc, reminding readers throughout that their writing is building toward something that they will be implementing, evaluating, and acting on. Third, the book is written to honor the highly contextual nature of the DiP, helping writers achieve the specificity needed to make local work understandable and transferable to readers in other settings. Finally, the volume explicitly affirms a scholar-practitioner identity, positioning professional knowledge in dialogue with scholarly knowledge rather than as something requiring academic legitimization.
These design features support readers while guiding them to complete the specific tasks of the dissertation in practice, which includes articulating a problem of practice grounded in organizational urgency and stakeholder impact; constructing a review of scholarly and professional knowledge; and using that literature to create a theory of action and contextual plan of intervention. The book focuses on applied research, with specific guidance for three methodologies most common to CPED-aligned programs, Action Research, Improvement Science, and Program/Practice Evaluation. As in the original volume, each chapter follows a carefully sequenced structure that includes warm-up reflections, explicit instruction in the genre's linguistic moves, annotated modeling, and scaffolded exercises that build systematically toward independent writing. Many examples are drawn from CPED-aligned dissertations, giving readers models that reflect the scholarship of practice central to their own doctoral work.
Ultimately, the book provides an affirmative apprenticeship that honors practitioners' existing expertise while making visible the often-hidden rules of academic writing, helping scholarly practitioners build confidence in their writing and facilitating the dissemination of impact in service of local change.
This title is part of a series--the first volume, Scaffolding the Language of Power: An Apprenticeship in Doctoral Level Writing and the Companion Workbook are available as a bundle.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Writing for action, equity, and practice
1.1 Writing at the doctoral level as a social justice project
1.2 The language of power in applied doctoral work
1.3 A pragmatic approach to DiP writing: systemic functional linguistics
1.4 Learning to write through a scaffolded apprenticeship
1.5 How this book supports DiP work
Chapter 2: The rules of the language of power: Writing as a pedagogical act
2.1 What “counts” as doctoral writing
2.2 Organization and scaffolding
2.3 Headings and chunking
2.4 Road maps
2.5 Topic sentences and paragraph coherence
2.6 Transitions and connectors
2.7 Signal words and phrases
Chapter 3: Writing with scholarly practitioner authority
3.1 Making well-reasoned arguments
3.2 Supporting claims with evidence
3.3 Using detailed, specific, precise language 3.4 Striving for synthesis over summary
3.5 Developing an original scholarly practitioner voice
Chapter 4: The problem of practice
4.1 Purposes of the problem of practice statement
4.2 Exploratory reading and writing
4.3 The problem of practice summary
4.4 The problem of practice background
4.5 The problem of practice rationale
4.6 The purpose statement
Chapter 5: Literature review and theoretical framework
PART I: Building the literature review
5.1 Purposes and scope of the DiP literature review
5.2 Searching and finding literature
5.3 Analyzing literature
5.4 Building out the review
PART II: Building the theoretical or conceptual framework
5.5 Finding your theoretical tools
5.6 Reading about your framework
5.7 Writing your theoretical framework
5.8 Overall takeaways
Chapter 6: Theory of action and plan of inquiry
PART I: Building the theory of action
6.1 Theory of action in DiPs
6.2 Synthesizing knowledge for action
6.3 Putting the theory of action together
PART II: Building the plan of inquiry
6.4 Purposes and elements of the plan of inquiry
6.5 Synthesizing methodological knowledge 6.6 Methodology description
6.7 Context, setting, and participants
6.8 Data sources and collection procedures 6.9 Data analysis
6.10 Quality and trustworthiness
6.11 Positionality and reflexivity
Chapter 7: The findings
7.1 Purposes and structure of the findings
7.2 Building an organizing schema
7.3 Answering your inquiry questions
7.4 Making analytic claims
7.5 Providing evidence and analytic explanation
7.6 Demonstrating trustworthiness
7.7 Scaffolding understanding for your reader
Chapter 8: Discussion, recommendations, and next steps
8.1 Purposes and structure of the discussion, recommendations, and next steps
8.2 Drawing contextualized conclusions
8.3 Connecting to scholarly and professional knowledge
8.4 Interpreting findings through the theoretical framework
8.5 Revisiting and revising the theory of action
8.6 Turning learning into actionable recommendations
8.7 Planning next steps
8.8 Concluding the Dissertation in Practice
References
Reviews & Endorsements
Scaffolding the Language of Power: An Apprenticeship in Writing the Dissertation in Practice does something both difficult and urgently necessary: it gives educators language for seeing what power often makes difficult to see. Strom illuminates the ways language constructs, legitimizes, and sustains relations of power in educational spaces—and then gives educators the conceptual tools to do something with that understanding. She does not simply ask readers to become more conscious of inequity; she scaffolds a way of naming, interrogating, and challenging the often-taken-for-granted assumptions that shape educational practice. At a moment when the very language available to educators for talking about justice, identity, history, and inequality is increasingly contested, this second edition could not be more timely.MoreJess Weiler, PhD, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership, Western Carolina University
Scaffolding the Language of Power: An Apprenticeship in Writing the Dissertation in Practice is the book Ed.D. programs have been waiting for. By focusing on the Dissertation in Practice as a particular genre of dissertation research, it offers a practical guide that is approachable and empowering for Ed.D. practitioner scholars. The book fills many gaps practitioner scholar students may experience in other research texts from identifying the problem and purpose for practical research to tailoring the literature review process for meeting actionable research goals. By pulling back the veil on the power codes behind dissertation writing while also building an intentional bridge for the practitioner-scholar doctoral student, Strom’s and Perry’s book powerfully resolves a problem of practice in the lives of Ed.D. faculty and students.MoreTricia Kress, PhD, Professor, Educational Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities, Molloy University