Guiding the dissertation proposal: a student advocacy approach

Approximately 40 to 50% of doctoral students never complete their programs (Golde, 2005). Most research on doctoral students focuses on those who have succeeded in earning degrees. The unsuccessful ones quietly slip away and offer little explanations for their departure. Graduate students who leave with all course work completed but no dissertation written are the most frustrating of those who leave. Effective doctoral advising through the proposal and dissertation processes could be the key to higher completion rates and to saving educational leadership graduate students before they leave doctoral programs.

Adult Learners

Doctoral students in education are older than their peers in other disciplines. The average age of education doctoral recipients in 2005 was 42.5 years, compared to 33 years in all other disciplines. Education doctoral recipients also take longer to complete their degrees, with an average of 13 years in a graduate program compared to 8.2 years in other disciplines (Smallwood, 2006).

Adult learners, in general, come to the learning experience with a specific set of characteristics (Knowles, Elwood, Holton,&Swanson, 1998). They have a need to know, a deliberate reason for learning. They arrive in the learning environment with many and varied experiences. Their past learning experiences are rich with life contexts. At this stage in their learning, the focus of adult learners is typically work-or life-oriented. They prefer problem-centered or performance-centered learning orientations, and they respond to external motivators. As they age, individual differences among adult learners increase with age and experience.

Adult learning characteristics have implications in advising doctoral students in educational administration. With a pragmatic approach to learning, doctoral students have a purposeful goal: to earn a degree. They are on a straight and narrow path to that goal and want to accomplish only those tasks that help them reach their goal.

However, in educational administration programs, the doctoral students are not twenty-some year-old future bench scientists. They are not funded by the National Science Foundation or by doctoral advisors’grants. The doctoral students in educational administration come to doctoral work from the world of practice. They may have taken a year or two from practice to work full time on the degree or may be a fully employed educator. Undoubtedly, the doctoral students in educational administration are adults, usually not young adults, but mature with years of professional experience.

The doctoral students’experiences in life and learning shape their interests. They come to the experience with rich histories in education settings. Unlike counterparts in other disciplines, they have pursued professional endeavors as educators and, most likely, have spent a number of years in the educational field. This extensive background in educating students influences what they value. They are passionate in their commitment to education. They want to be the leaders in improving schools for students (Labaree, 2003).