Educational leaders and the professional doctorate dissertation: an analysis of leaders’ interests within the educational leadership corpus

ABSTRACT Educational leadership scholarship, research on school individuals at the helm of achieving school goals, is well documented. However, less is known regarding educational leaders’ research in professional doctorate programmes, where practice may influence scholarship. This study sought to add to professional doctorate research by using directed qualitative content analysis guided by educational administration schools of thought described in a review of the literature to uncover educational leaders’ interests and concerns through an examination of 101 professional doctorate dissertations completed between 2013 and 2019. Of the 101 dissertations analysed, 88 aligned with the educational administration corpus. Educational leaders focused the majority of their research on school improvement and school effectiveness (65.9%), while leading teachers (5.7%) was of less concern. This result suggests that educational leaders with the agency or power to implement the findings from their doctoral dissertation may consider research in school improvement and school effectiveness as the most critical education administration school of research. Results from this study could be used by other educational leadership programmes to determine the prevalence of education administration research, examine the role of practice in research completed, and to broaden the scope of leaders’ research.