Ayhan Aydın, Şengül Uysal
Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Faculty of Education, Turkey

ABSTRACT
Problem Statement: The purpose of doctoral programmes is to evaluate scientific events from a deep and broad perspective, using the skills necessary to generate new syntheses [NOTE: Please specify “new syntheses of what” – theories and ideas?]. Doctoral theses must develop new scientific methods or apply well-known methods to new fields. To encourage scientific development, we should analyse the content and quality of graduate programmes.
Purpose of the study: This study analysed doctoral theses that were written on educational administration and completed between 2003-2008 in Turkey and abroad. Analysis focused on subjects, methods and results.
Data Collection and Analysis: A general survey was used in this study. Data were obtained by reviewing documents from the YOK [NOTE: Please specify what this acronym stands for and then provide the acronym in parentheses], the websites of universities and dissertations and theses.
Findings: Our analyses showed similarities between the subjects of theses written in Turkey and the subjects of theses written abroad. Studies on the field of educational administration do not adopt broad perspectives. While quantitative methods are usually preferred in Turkey, qualitative methods are mostly used abroad. In addition, it is difficult to say that the results of research studies provide scientific knowledge and philosophical points of view. Scientific information is produced under the effects of a positivist paradigm with a unidisciplinary, determinist approach.
Recommendations: It is essential that the knowledge found in articles and scientific research studies be cumulative and complementary. Topics like contemporary problems in the Turkish Educational Sysytem; the social, cultural, and political functions of education; and equality and human should be analysed. The field of educational administration, which is interdisciplinary, should interact with group dynamics, philosophy, sociology, psychology and anthropology.
Keywords: Educational administration, doctoral thesis, Turkey, abroad.