Lisa Marie Brennecke reflects on pursuing a doctoral degree. She notes that obtaining a doctorate requires a major commitment but allows one to enhance their knowledge and achieve career goals. As a multimedia technician, she encounters new technologies that could be shared. The program will help her think and write like a scholar by creating new knowledge through original research. After completing her degree, she will gain critical thinking skills and a new identity as a community leader, applying what she has learned to improve lives professionally and personally.

1. Personal Reflection and Purpose
Lisa Marie Brennecke
University of Phoenix

2. Topics
• Factors for Obtaining a Doctoral Degree
• Current Position Preparedness
• Program Outcomes
• Life After Doctoral Completion
• Closing Thoughts

3. Factors for Obtaining a Doctoral
Degree
• It is a major commitment to start a study at the
doctoral level (Leonard, Becker & Coate, 2006).
• The reason a person has for joining a doctoral
program will influence what the learner will get
out of it (Wellington, Bathmaker, Hunt, McCulloch, &, Sikes, 2005).
• Completing research as a doctoral student is
about learning of ones relationship with the
world (Wellington, Bathmaker, Hunt, McCulloch, &, Sikes, 2005).
Two reasons to obtain a doctoral degree are to
enhance a person’s knowledge base, and to
obtain career goals.

4. Current Position Preparedness
• Multimedia Technician
• Encounter New Technologies to share
• Perspective transformation can occur due to
change of job status (Mezirow,1990).

5. Program Outcomes
• Many graduate students do not begin a doctorate by thinking or writing
like scholars (Caffarella, & Barnett, 2000).
• Students who obtain doctorates create new knowledge though the
creation of original research (Wikeley & Muschamp, 2004).

6. Program Outcomes
• Academic disciplines general knowledge base can:
– understand, design and implement projects
– know how to identify new academic questions (Wikeley & Muschamp,
2004).
• Critical thinking is important because a person can accurately:
– Interpret data at a high level of intelligence
– Improve thinking abilities
– Validate choices made by looking at data (Lunney, 2003).

7. Life after Doctoral Completion
• Can use new skills in professional and personal life
• Professional
– Journals and Books
– Conferences
• Personal
– Community Leaders
– Church Leader

8. A new Identity
• “Like a kaleidoscope in which patters of
coloured class change and re-form as the
wheel is turned, so the identity and
associated patters of behavior and
attitude that we display tend to change
and re-form according to social
circumstances” (Wellington, Bathmaker, Hunt, McCulloch, & Sikes, 2005).

10. Closing Thoughts
• Two reasons to start a doctoral program include
scholarship and to obtain a career goals.
• A students can be prepared correctly for this
endeavor because of solid past career and
education experience .
• Doctors will have a new way of thinking after
obtaining many different applicable skills.
• After a degree in educational leadership has been
completed, the doctor will be a better citizen in their
community because of the skills that they have
learned that will improve their professional and
personal life.

11. References
• Caffarella, R., & Barnett, B. (2000). Teaching doctoral students to become scholarly
writers: the importance of giving and receiving critiques. Studies in Higher
Education, 25(1), 39-52.
• Leonard, D., Becker, R., & Coate, K. (2005). To prove myself at the highest level:
The benefits of doctoral study. Higher Education Research & Development, 24(2),
135-149.
• Lunney, M. (2003, July-September). Critical thinking and accuracy of nurses'
diagnoses. International Journal of Nursing Terminologies and Classifications,
14(3), 96.
• Mezirow, J. (1990). Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: A guide to
transformative and emancipatory learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Wellington, J., Bathmaker, A., Hunt, C., McCulloch, G., & Sikes, P. (2005).
Succeeding with your doctorate. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications
• Wikeley, F., & Muschamp, Y. (2004, May). Pedagogical implications of working with
doctoral students at a distance. Distance Education, 25(1), 125.