Özet:

                This study was carried on to describe the paradigmatic, methodological and thematic trends of education field and particularly educational sciences whose aim was researching and revealing educational reality, by examining the characteristics of doctoral dissertations prepared in the field.  Using content analysis technique, 1083 doctoral dissertations (648 dissertations in educational sciences departments; 435 dissertations teacher training departments), prepared between 1986 and 2007, were examined according to their basic characteristics, their preferred scientific research paradigms, their research methodology and themes. The data which were gathered by the data gathering form which was created based on similar research and doctoral dissertations, were analyzed for frequency distributions; subjected to cluster analysis to reveal specific groups of dissertations and ratio analysis based on years to examine trends. At the end of the analysis, which was performed based on Egon Guba's paradigmatic taxonomy (positivist, constructivist, critical); it was found that educational scientists were, no matter whether thesis advisor or author, mostly male; dominant paradigm in the dissertations was positivism (% 90,4); survey and experimental research designs were mostly preferred research designs; most of the dissertations' educational level was directed towards elementary and higher education level; most of the dissertations aimed to increase educational success and revealing attitude, problems, behaviors and beliefs of teachers and students, when some of the trends belong to characteristics of dissertations evaluated together, it was understood that non-positivist trends in education field and in particularly educational sciences in Turkey did not have a Khunian form (revolutional and incommensurable), non-positivist trends had a form which just increased the sorts of research techniques. 

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