Educational Science (MSc)
The Master’s specialisation Educational Science offers students cutting-edge insights into how individuals develop and learn and how education can be optimized to include every learner. Students practice translating the implications of this research to educational practices including instruction, social interaction, and assessment. Because learning and education are not ‘one-size-fits-all’ phenomena, individual differences between children receive ample attention.
Educational Science is one of the nine specialisations of the master’s programme in Education and Child Studies that you can choose at Leiden University.
This specialisation offers a unique multidisciplinary approach: you will study children’s learning processes from a cognitive-psychological, social-emotional, and neurodevelopmental perspective. In addition to this multidisciplinary focus on education and the learning and developing child, the programme addresses the impact that the social and educational environment have, including teachers. You practise with critical reflection from different, sometimes opposing, (theoretical) viewpoints. At the core of the programme is the idea that the Master’s student develops a critical attitude towards research and practices in the field of learning and education, as well as the skills needed to bridge the gap between theory, research, and educational practice.
Educational Sciences addresses questions such as:
- What is the relation between brain development, cognitive development, and learning?
- How do children learn to understand what they read?
- How does contemporary mathematics education impact children’s arithmetic strategies?
- How can teachers foster children’s motivation for school by supporting their needs?
- How can teachers adapt their teaching to the needs of children with different sociocultural backgrounds?
- How can teachers build effective individualized programs based on ongoing progress monitoring data?
- What are the promises and challenges of digital educational applications?
- What are the backgrounds, meanings, and consequences of current educational innovations?
Why choose this specialisation?
This specialisation fits you if you wish to become an expert in learning processes, and social-emotional and cognitive development in educational contexts. Key to the programme is its multidisciplinary approach: you will study educational contexts and learning processes of children and adolescents from a cognitive-psychological, social-emotional, and neuroscientific perspective. Attention is paid is to societal and group processes and their implications for individuals as well.
You will learn to think critically about educational contexts and the development of children and adolescents on the basis of recent theoretical knowledge and empirical research. Upon completion of the programme you will be able to conduct educationally relevant research and to evaluate teaching methods and educational innovations and developments based on evidence and scientifically sound arguments. You acknowledge the multiple perspectives that exist and are able to argument why you have made certain choices.
The programme will give you the broad experience required to work in a wide range of educational settings, including schools, museums, governance, educational design, and educational consultancy.
Please note: if you want to work as a teacher in the Netherlands. This programme does not prepare or qualify you for this kind of work.
On campus education
Our teaching takes place on campus and not online. You are trained for a social profession, in which interactions with children, parents, educators, teachers, organizations, policy makers and teammates are key. We believe that social skills are honed through extensive interaction with teachers and fellow students during your education. In this way, you learn to cooperate with others and to define your own role in that cooperation. You will work on other important competencies too, such as your ability to extract information directly "live" from lectures, working groups and interviews. We expect professional behavior from you in which you consider not only your own perspective, but also the perspective of the other, such as your teacher, fellow student or participant. All these skills you can later apply in your profession as an educator.