An examination of doctoral dissertations in the field of educational administration in Turkey between 2012-2022 in terms of social paradigms

This study aimed to examine the distribution of doctoral dissertations in educational administration (supervision, planning, and economics) in the Department of Educational Sciences in Turkey between 2012 and 2022, regarding social paradigms. The systematic review design's systematic analysis type was used to search through the YÖK National Dissertation Centre database. As a result of the search, 172 doctoral dissertations were included in the scope of this study. The methodology sections of doctoral dissertations were analyzed according to research methods, research designs, data collection techniques knowledge-constitutive interests, philosophical movements, and social paradigms. In the study, it was found that the realism/modernism-based functional paradigm based on technical interest came to the fore, in this direction, the quantitative research method was the most used research method between 2012 and 2022, while idealism-based qualitative and pragmatism-based mixed method research have been used more by researchers since 2020. In addition, according to the research findings, only 10 of the researchers provided information about the philosophy and paradigm they were influenced by. In line with these results, it is recommended that researchers should follow the national and international literature, conduct their studies by following the paradigm transformation in this field, and inform the reader about the philosophy and paradigm on which the research is based in a way that reflects the world view of the researcher in their studies.