What does an Ed.D thesis/dissertation entail?

[Larson]

I am considering applying for an Ed.D (probably in leadership) but am a bit weary of the thesis. I have the time and money to complete a degree, but find academic writing and research very difficult and daunting (part of the reason I am not applying to PhD). This could be due to learning disabilities which make being a student very challenging for me (this however, did not stop me from graduating from prestigious bachelors and masters programs- I simply went part time and struggled through). I want the job opportunities an Ed.D can offer, but am not confident about my ability to complete a thesis. I am now making the decision if I should do another masters instead of an Ed. D for this reason. I have heard that 2/3 of people who start their doctorate degree never finish because they cannot complete their thesis. The validity to that claim is unknown.

 

My understanding of a thesis is the following:

-a narrow topic needs to be chosen

-a vast amount of relevant literature needs to be examined and put into a lengthy literature review

-Experiments or projects are set up to prove your thesis. 

-You write a dissertation which can be anywhere from 50-350 pages (depending on program) which incorporates literature reviews and your experiment/project/narrow topic of study 

-You then need to defend your thesis to your professors, and maybe make possible changes 

 

Am I getting this right? How many hours would you say are typically associated with a thesis/dissertation in an Ed.D program? Obviously, requirements vary per program. I am just trying to assess the weight of the thesis and whether I would be able to complete it given my learning disabilities. 

 

I have found 2 Ed.D's that do not require thesis, but a capstone project which would be much easier for me- but they are in areas of the country I cannot relocate. Any information you could give would be very helpful. Thank you so much. 

[juilletmercredi]

About 50% of people who begin a doctoral program do not finish one.  This is for a variety of reasons, which include - but aren't limited to - not feeling able to complete a thesis.  What the Ed.D thesis will entail will entirely depend on the program, but I think it's safe to say that your assessment of what's necessary is true (although I would say that 50 pages would be too short for a doctoral dissertation.  The shortest ones I've seen have been around 100 pages).

 

The whole point of a doctoral program is to give you the tools and knowledge necessary to complete that dissertation, since doctoral degrees usually prepare you for a research career in which you will have to do similar work.  If you find academic writing and research too daunting to surmount even with assistance for your learning disabilities, then Ed.D programs that emphasize research and scholarship might not be good fits for you.  If you are trying to take the EdD back into practice and work in the education field as a leader/practitioner, then an Ed.D program without a dissertation requirement might be ok.  But if you are looking to potentially go into a research career, I think any hiring committee would be quite skeptical of an Ed.D holder who did not complete a dissertation.  Besides, I have to say that the dissertation is not the only part of the doctoral degree that requires academic writing and research;r your classes and your comprehensive exams will also require those skills.  The doctoral degree - even the Ed.D - is largely a research degree, so if you find research very difficult to the point that you think you can't do it, then I question whether you should embark upon an Ed.D.

 

How many hours?  That's impossible to estimate up front  It depends entirely on the project you pick, how demanding your advisor is, the resources at your particular university, how well and how quickly you write, whether you need to learn new analysis techniques to complete the project, etc.  I think it's more common to think in terms of months or years.  In my field (psychology), a complete dissertation usually takes about 1-2 years to complete.  Roughly 1 year is spent collecting, preparing, and analyzing data, and the other year is spent writing it up.  In my case, I technically only spent 9 months on my dissertation, but that's because the data was largely collected while I was still in coursework and exams.  My dissertation was about 132 pages excluding references.  I spent about 9 months actively working on it - September through May.  I would say that I spent roughly 30 hours on it most weeks. 9 months x 4 weeks x 30 hours is roughly 1080 hours, but that does not include the time I spent writing the dissertation proposal (which took me 3 months prior to actually beginning the dissertation), the time I spent collecting data for the dissertation (that took a long time, but it was part of a larger project that included other papers and supported at least one other dissertation), or the time I spent revising the dissertation after my defense (that took me about a month).  And there were definitely some weeks - especially towards the end - in which I spent more than 30 hours working on the dissertation.

 

Basically, you can see the dissertation as a series of small steps.  It is overall a large project, but you don't tackle it all at once.  I broke my dissertation down into multiple 2-page sections, and so when I sat down to write it wasn't "I'm going to work on my dissertation today" (which feels enormous) but "I'm going to write this 2-page sub-section on XXX today" (which is a doable daily goal).  You set daily and weekly and monthly goals and a timeline for yourself, and you hack away at it a little at a time.

[Chiqui74]

An EdD is a professional degree (or at the very least not a research one), and it is my understadning that dissertations aren not usually requiered.  Instead, you have to do a different king of project, a more applied one.  I very briefly considered getting an EdD and that was the case for the programs I evaluated.

Edited February 16, 2015 by Chiqui74