Mandatory Courses

Mandatory courses in Education are offered in English.
Courses are offered to students admitted to PhD-studies. Priority is given to PhD-students at the Dept of Education. Other PhD-students are very welcome to participate if seats are available.

Application

The application to the mandatory courses is submitted on-line. Please find information at each course site.

Contact

For more information about administrative issues, please e-mail: forskarutbildning@edu.su.se

PhD courses overview

Here you find our PhD courses, given on a regular basis, in an overview:
PhD courses overview april 2024 (75 Kb)

The aim of the course is to give doctoral students the opportunity to develop their ability to take an ethical position in relation to their own research, as well as the ability to formulate, analyze, and critically reflect on issues pertaining to research ethics based on regulations and relevant literature. The course also raises participants' awareness of ethical questions, and developing a deeper understanding of both the wide-range of possibilities and limitations of research, and the role society and individual responsibility plays in relation to pedagogical and didactical phenomena and questions.

This course focuses on ethical dilemmas and considerations in research on educational phenomena. During the course we will analyze dissertations in relation to the ethical guidelines and laws governing research involving individuals and groups. We will also reflect on moral and ethical dilemmas in current educational research. Moreover the course will focus on how the research design in terms of theoretical perspectives, data construction, analytical premises and instruments used in many existing research traditions influence ethical issues. Finally the course will focus on how research based knowledge is received on different arenas and how it may influence different groups, social practices and potential areas of conflict with other forms of knowledge and experiences in society.

The course is offered in the form of compulsory seminars. The course is assessed through the seminars and an individual paper.

General information of the course

As a PhD student it is important to present and discuss research problems and results within the research society. One important arena for doing this is the research seminar. At the department there are about 15 different research seminars where researchers meet regularly to discuss issues related to their own interest. The aim of this course is to socialize PhD students in to the research seminar culture within the department and to create conditions for PhD students to be able to present their research at research conferences and thereby to prepare for being a part of the wider research society. After the course the PhD student should:

1. Present a self-written research paper in a research seminar at the department
2. Discuss the paper with other researchers at the seminar and
3. Make revisions in accordance with the comments and critique discussed in the seminar to be able to present the paper at a research conference

The PhD student is required to continually participate in at least one research seminar where the paper is presented. The PhD student is also responsible for writing their own paper, present it independently, discuss it and revise it so it could be considered a valid research paper.

The course is examined in three steps. Firstly, through a written draft presented at the seminar, secondly through the presentation and discussion within the seminar and finally through the revision of the paper until it is considered a valid conference paper.​

General information of the course

The course is distributed over 3 terms and includes theoretical as well as practical content. The course includes reflection over different approaches to research. The overarching aim of the course is that doctoral students will, based on Swedish regulations and policy, be able to develop their ability to formulate, analyse and problematise aspects with relevance for communication of research findings with society.

The course will provide opportunities for practicing different modes of communication, taking as point of departure the doctoral student’s own research project and develop a communication plan. Apart from outlining a communication plan, the course will provide opportunity for oral as well as written communication and discussion of own and others’ research findings from a popular scientific perspective in Swedish or English. The course puts an emphasis on both oral and written presentation modes of communication.

Note that the communication plan written for the doctoral student's final reading seminar also forms a part examination within this course. 

After finishing the course, the doctoral student will be able to:

• Present and discuss research findings orally and in text in popular form in a way that shows insight into how their research may contribute to the development of the society and learning.
• Distinguish, assess and evaluate the opportunities and obstacles of their research, its role in society and individual responsibility for how it is used in different forms/ fora.

General information of the course

The purpose of the course is for PhD candidates to develop their academic literacy skills in general, and in relation to the different academic genres particular to their specific areas of educational research. During the course, doctoral students will learn to cooperate and communicate with academic colleagues in both written and oral forms. The doctoral candidates’ individual coursework will render a clear and well thought out strategy for academic publication. 

The course is divided into three parts involving different forms of assessment. The brief descriptions for each of the parts.

Part 1 (Autumn term with two parts): Publication strategy (3 ECTS) & Peer review process (3 ECTS):

Part 1.1   Publication strategy (3ECTS): Get to know the academic journals and their publications (facilitator: Shu-Nu Chang Rundgren)
The purpose of Part 1.1 is to help doctoral candidates to map the highly ranked journals in the field of educational research and to discuss the critical features of accepted publications containing empirical studies and review articles in those journals. Doctoral candidates will work together in small study groups (2-3 persons per group) focusing particularly on exploring the academic journals in educational research field and analyzing the publications in the journals. This component runs over the first two months during the autumn term and provides doctoral students with three meetings containing one lecture, one workshop and two seminars. 

Part 1.2  Peer review process (3 ECTS) (facilitator: Cormac Mc Grath)
This part of the course will focusses on the peer review process as a facet of academic literacy. The aim, more specifically is to introduce doctoral students to peer review, to enhance peer review practices as a way of understanding one’s own academic contribution in the broader context of the scientific community. 

Part 2 (Spring term): How do I get published (1,5 ECTS) (facilitator: Max Scheja):

This part of the course invites doctoral candidates to reflect on aspects relating to what matters in communicating research effectively. The course includes three seminars centering on different aspects of getting published.

Part 3 (Autumn term): meeting your superviors and aiming for your 50% seminar:

The third part of the course is to let doctoral candidates meet with their supervisors to apply what they have learned from the course during the past year and aim for their 50% seminar of their PhD projects. There is no limit of the time plan for the third part, since it depends very much on each doctoral student’s research percentage and progress of the research project. The focus of this part is to write up an explicit publication plan in relation to the individual PhD project outlining how each PhD project’s research area and how the research project will be disseminated in different fora including journals and/or conferences. Presenting the publication plan at the 50% seminar and getting feedback from the readers.

The aim of the course

The aim of the course is to develop the participants’ ability and familiarity with theoretical elements, general scientific methodology, and the specific methods used in research in Education. The participant develops the ability to critically examine and evaluate current research and new and complex phenomena, questions and situations, put forward in current dissertations in Education.

Learning Outcomes

After the course, you should be able to:

• Describe and discuss the criteria for a good PhD thesis
• Critically examine three PhD theses in relation to the different criteria
• Describe and discuss the critical aspects of research process

General information of the course

During this course we will focus on the underlying concepts that have shaped research within the social sciences, and more specifically, pedagogical research.  Original hypotheses concerning society and individuals, language, symbols, and knowledge, as well as central phenomena within “education” are discussed from various theoretical perspectives and methodological traditions. Social Science research and views on credibility and validity in comparison to other research traditions will be a common thread throughout the course, as well as questions about how knowledge can be represented in language. Another focus will be on the relationship between design, data construction and analytical premises and instruments used in many existing research traditions, which will be presented in the course. This will be connected to the presentation of research journals of each research tradition, as well as examples of influential articles of each tradition.

Overall Aim

The overall aim of this course is to give doctoral students the opportunity to develop their methodological understanding about intervention studies in the field of educational research. In particular, the course will invite doctoral students to reflect on different national and international approaches to intervention studies including the complex use of hypotheses in different study designs and how intervention aspects can be seen in relation to data collection procedures. The course will also address the question how interventions can be designed in order to facilitate educational processes and outcomes, thus providing  doctoral students with an opportunity to develop their understanding of possibilities and constraints of conducting invention studies in the context of, for instance, school improvement. 

Course Content

The course introduces national and international examples that serve to invite reflection on the conditions for designing intervention studies in the field of education. In particular, the course centres on three broad themes:

1. interventions and experiments anchored in qualitative and quantitative research paradigms
2. interventions in practice (learning studies, lesson studies, action research, design-based research and formative interventions)
3. interventions in data collection and data analysis

The course aim and design

The purpose of the course is for PhD candidates who have not taken any previous quantitative and statistics courses to develop their knowledge and skills of quantitative methods and statistical analyses in educational research. During the course, doctoral students will develop (1) their over-view on how to conduct research via quantitative methods and the related design in educational research, (2) their knowledge and skills of basic statistical concepts and procedures, including measurement, distributions, descriptive statistics, and tests of significance, (3) their ability to critically evaluate the statistical analyses identified in literature, and (4) their skill on developing a survey and analyzing the data via SPSS program. The maximum number of course participants is limited to 20. PhD candidates from the Department of Education are given priority in this course.

The aim of the course

The aim of the course is to provide doctoral research students opportunities to explore the intersections between education policy, discourse and comparative inquiry in contemporary society. Issues addressing theory based justifications of comparative policy research and particularly, its discursive manifestations at international, state and institutional levels will be critically examined. The course content is offered in a series of five monthly face to face sessions. Within the realms of the learning objectives and course aims, the course assessment consists of a near final written paper for publication.

Pedagogik och utbildning har under lång tid varit viktiga inslag inom den västerländska utopiska traditionen. I människans sökande efter ett idealsamhälle finns därför ofta föreställningar om lärande och fostran nedtecknade. Kursen behandlar sådana edutopier både som historiska fenomen och i vår egen samtid. Centrala frågor i kursen är vilka återkommande teman av pedagogisk och utbildningsrelaterad art som går att identifiera inom den utopiska traditionen, men också vilka inslag som har minskat i betydelse i samband med det moderna utbildningssamhällets framväxt.

Kursen behandlar pedagogik som samhällsvetenskaplig disciplin. Inom kursen behandlas centrala perspektiv och teorier som har haft betydelse för pedagogikämnets framväxt och som har betydelse för pedagogikämnet idag.

Kursen behandlar också vilken betydelse som pedagogikämnet har haft för samhället och dess utveckling samt de problem och utmaningar som ämnet står inför i relation till framtiden.

Mer precist behandlas (1) pedagogikämnet som samhällsvetenskaplig disciplin, (2) lärande, dess villkor och utfall samt (3) pedagogikens roll i samhället.

Kursen har åtta kurstillfällen, där tiden är fastlagd. Kursen bygger på föreläsningar och seminarier som studenterna förväntas förbereda sig till samt grupparbetsuppgifter.

Overall aim
The aim of the course is to provide doctoral research students opportunities to explore the challenges adult education is facing in an increasingly interconnected world. How information technology, migration, and economic and cultural globalization, are challenging local institutions, life styles, identities, values, citizenship and knowledge production. How learning is and can be conceptualized in a globalized world will be critically examined.

The course is given within the research school Adult Learning/Forskarskola i vuxnas lärande.