The Education Dissertation: A Historical Exploration

• In Event: Roundtable Session 54
  In Roundtable Session: Writing and the Dissertation

Abstract

The education PhD is a well-established genre. But this ubiquity belies a richer nexus of ideologies, social roles, rhetorical moves, and diverse participants. The purpose of this paper is to explore the education doctoral dissertation through a rhetorical genre studies lens that promotes consideration of the often unseen situation, culture, and genres infusing the dissertation. First, a corpus of 4,762 dissertations was assembled by searching the “Dissertation and Theses @ University of California” for doctoral dissertations under the subject of “education.” General trends were quantitatively analyzed across the corpus of dissertations, while nine select manuscripts were analyzed qualitatively. Findings inform individuals engaged in producing, advising, and evaluating education dissertations.

Author

• Danielle Hagood, University of California - Davis