A meeting of cultures: part-time students in an Ed.D. Program

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the cultural perspectives of the part-time doctoral students in educational administration and of selected faculty in the college of education at a medium-size middle western US university. Results indicated that among participants in this study two distinct cultures developed. The first culture, the vocational culture, was made up of part-time doctoral students and professors of the educational administration department. The perspectives of this culture were developed on values, beliefs, and goals that emphasized skills, training, processes, and procedures for effective educational administration. The second group, the academic culture, emphasized a more traditional, academic, research emphasis, and was made up of the instructors of the professional common core subjects. The adoption of the Ed.D. degree caused the university to search for a new identity, contributing to an attempt by each culture to try to convince the part-time doctoral students in educational administration that their respective values, beliefs, and goals were the knowledge most worth acquiring. The genuine feeling of sympathy for the time constraints and other situations affecting the part-time doctoral student in educational administration caused a certain amount of accommodation and negotiation to take place that enabled the students a questionable degree of influence concerning degree expectations.