Over one hundred years of research in the field of educational leadership has developed many innovations and accomplishments for those seeking to pursue either a PhD or an EdD; however, the confusion between the two degree options remains as unclear as it was at their inception. The commonly held belief is that the PhD is the researcher's degree whereas the EdD is the practitioner's degree. This research study set out to clarify the confusion by conducting a corpus analysis of the aboutness of PhD dissertations in educational leadership. A study corpus was created using 100 PhD dissertations ranging in dates from 2017 through 2019. This corpus was analyzed using a keyword analysis, collocate analysis, and qualitative coding of concordance lines to discover what these PhD dissertations were about. The quantitative data analysis of the keywords and collocates demonstrated that PhD dissertations were concerned with practical issues in K-12 education. The concordance line coding led to the identification of the following themes: meeting students' needs, teacher and leaders practices, and valuing teachers. All of these themes are practical issues that occur in K-12 educational settings. This research study did not find any evidence to support the researcher versus practitioner distinction that was previously believed to be true. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]