On the Centrality of the Dissertation

A thorough, sophisticated literature review is the foundation and in-spiration for substantial, useful research. The complex nature of edu-cation research demands such thorough, sophisticated reviews. Although doctoral education is a key means for improving education research, the literature has given short shrift to the dissertation liter-ature review. This article suggests criteria to evaluate the quality of dissertation literature reviews and reports a study that examined dis-sertations at three universities. Acquiring the skills and knowledge required to be education scholars, able to analyze and synthesize the research in a field of specialization, should be the focal, integrative activity of predissertation doctoral education. Such scholarship is a prerequisite for increased methodological sophistication and for im-proving the usefulness of education research. We have all heard the joke before—as we movethrough graduate school, we learn more and moreabout less and less until we know everything about nothing. It is expected that someone earning a doctorate has a thorough and sophisticated understanding of an area of research and scholarship. Unfortunately, many doctoral dissertations in education belie the joke, their authors failing to master the liter-ature that is supposed to be the foundation of their research. If their dissertation literature reviews are any indication, many of these now-doctors know bits and pieces of a disorganized topic. Yet we cannot blame them for their failure to demonstrate what we, the education research community, have not clearly articu-lated or valued. Acquiring the skills and knowledge required to be education scholars should be the focal, integrative activity of predissertation doctoral education. Preparing students to analyze and synthesize research in a field of specialization is crucial to understanding ed-ucational ideas. Such preparation is prerequisite to choosing a productive dissertation topic and appropriating fruitful methods of data collection and analysis. In this article, we first argue that a thorough, sophisticated re-view of literature is even more important in education research, with its messy, complex problems, than in most other fields an