Parenting and Child Development (MSc)

About the programme

What you will learn

The master’s specialisation Parenting and Child Development will provide you with a state-of-the-art, in-depth understanding of

• family and caregiving factors that influence child development, such as caregiver-child attachment, parenting styles and practices used by (professional) caregivers and family functioning
• historical trends in parenting advice and how these influence current advice
• the new challenges and opportunities digital media pose in current-day caregiving
• neural, behavioral, and social-cognitive development in early childhood with specific attention to the interaction between child characteristics (e.g., temperament or neurobiological make-up) and environmental factors

In addition, you will acquire the tools to

• critically analyze the quality of (research on) parenting advice, parenting interventions, and child development
• develop evidence-based preventive parenting/caregiving programmes

Finally, you will gain practical experience with

• the work involved in conducting research in the field of parenting, child care and development during your master thesis (often involves training in observation of caregiver-child interactions, and/or using laboratory techniques such as attentional, behavioral or neurophysiological measures)
• the work of professionals in the field of parenting and child development during your internship. Examples of internships institutions are companies providing parenting advice and courses on child development to (professional) caregivers, adoption agencies, youth health care institutions, childcare organizations.

Dutch students who complete this master’s specialisation and completed the bachelor Pedagogische Wetenschappen or the pre-master programme Pedagogische Wetenschappen at Leiden University, fulfill the criteria for the NVO-registration for 'Basis pedagoog' and the SKJ-registration for 'Master-pedagoog'.

Internship

An important part of the master’s specialisation Parenting and Child Development is the internship. You learn to apply scientific knowledge and academic skills in a realistic working environment and to operate independently and responsibly in an organization. During your internship you develop your skills in practice or in scientific research.

Master’s project

We believe it is important that during the master project, you can develop and refine your research skills. The specific topic of your project does not need to be directly related to your specialisation. However, your research question should naturally fall within the broad field of Education and Child Studies. We expect our students to share this wide-ranging interest with us. For us, the central focus is that you learn about the research process and challenge yourself to gain new insights and knowledge.

Students can choose from multiple projects, and we do our best to place students in their top choices as much as possible. No matter which project you are assigned to, we support you in your learning process. Concerned about the process? The course Practice of empirical research course will prepare you well. Additionally, there are various resources available within the University.

Starting in February

If you start the MSc in February, you will enter the second part of our programme. You start the master project and the internship. Finding an internship is the responsibility of the student. If you prefer to do the preparatory courses first and then the master project and internship, please start the MSc in September.

Fulltime programme

The MSc is a full-time course. If you want to take longer to complete the program, you can. We recommend students to do the internship at the end of the programme. The study advisor will be happy to advice you.