Doctoral dissertation in social sciences and scientific work

Abstract

Writing an academic text within institutions of higher education and research generally responds to two concerns. First, the immediate motivation to publish and possibly been recognized by their respective academic peers. Second, satisfying a training requirement (submission to obtain a title or a college degree) widely recognized by the academic community and by society. In both cases, the epistemic and cognitive value of the text content varies in function on the referring ones from which its object of study were conceived, and on which it rests the design, the structure and the organization of its writing. This paper deals with the epistemological problems that goes with the development of the doctoral dissertation in social sciences, and proposes a methodological strategy to be applied to an ongoing research, whose objective is to examine the contribution of doctoral dissertation to the development of the field of social and educational research.