The Academic Home of Turkish Higher Education Research: A Demographic, Thematic and Methodological Examination of Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

Note: The authors are thankful to Lecturer Bekir Burak Soyer and Hakan Şahin for their generous assistance and support during the data collection procedure. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the paper for their constructive and critical comments.

Knowledge Production in The Field of Educational Administration in Turkey: Evaluation of Dissertations within The Context of Habermas' Knowledge Taxonomy

“…EA is a scientific theory and practice field that emerged in the USA at the end of the nineteenth century. Especially with the period of the Theory Movement, the production of knowledge reflecting the identity of this field in Western countries in education management accelerated (Ozdemir, 2018). Turkey is one of the countries where many studies are conducted in the field of EA, and significant contributions are made to the literature accordingly.…”

“…Assuredly, studies prepared in the field of EA contributing to theory and practice are remarkable in this regard; these studies, including dissertations and through which scientia is produced in the field of EA, have been discussed by many. Methodological and conceptual analyses (e.g., Fazliogullari, 2012;Isci, 2013;Karadag, 2009;Ozdemir & Aypay, 2022) as well as knowledge-based analyses (e.g., Gulmez et al, 2020;Gumus et al, 2019;Uslu Cetin & Ozdemir, 2021) have also been made. However, among knowledge-based analyses, the existence of studies dealing with dissertations prepared in Turkey in terms of the type of knowledge produced is rather limited.…”

“…While developing the data collection tool, the basic features and classification details of previous studies related to studying dissertations were taken into consideration. For the development of this process, a broad spectrum approach was taken, and a fair number of studies (Balci, 2008;Balci & Apaydin, 2009;Bellibas & Gumus, 2019;Cimen et al, 2020;Ozdemir & Aypay, 2022;Turan et al, 2014) were checked. In addition, when analyzing the dissertations concerning the types of knowledge they produce, Habermas's (1994) knowledge taxonomy was the main source of reference.…”

“…Existing studies on dissertations in the field in Turkey (e.g., Cimen et al, 2020;Fazliogullari, 2012;Isci, 2013;Karadag, 2009;Karadag, 2010;Uysal, 2013) already include dissertations previously prepared and do not investigate the aforementioned time period. In the limited number of studies that refer to dissertations in the recent years (Aksu, 2020;Koksal, 2019;Ozdemir & Aypay, 2022;Uslu Cetin & Ozdemir, 2021),…”

“…Nevertheless, it is observed that a good many studies prepared in the field of EA are also criticized (Cimen et al 2020;Karadag, 2010). It is emphasized that especially dissertations written in the literature of EA generate several problems in influencing education policies and producing knowledge (Ozdemir, 2017;Ozdemir & Aypay, 2022), and they also show similar characteristics in general (Balci & Apaydin, 2009). According to researchers (Aksu, 2020;Evers & Lakomski, 1996;Fazliogullari & Kurul, 2013), the reasons for this are the insufficiency of tendencies other than positivism and the limitation of self-critique studies.…”