The 2nd Cycle of Studies in Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of UP aims to:

• Provide specialized training in education sciences at the University of Porto, which allows equating education and training phenomena in a complex and critical perspective, as well as an outlook for action and research.
• Foster advanced knowledge and competences on intervention methods and techniques towards the development of adequate models and devices for the development, implementation, evaluation and execution of training, management and communitarian and socio-cultural intervention programs and projects.
• Provide advanced knowledge on research methods and techniques in education.
• Train professionals for achieve autonomy in training, management, evaluation and consultation in education.

 
In the 2023-2025 edition, this course is organized with the following domains:

 

• Education, Gender, Body and Violence
  

Increasingly, violence is a social and educational problem, which undertakes gender features, currently inacceptable. In a historical perspective, the social construction of gender is being conceptualized in a more complex way, exceeding the biologist and binary conceptions of the feminine and the masculine. Furthermore, the modernity heritage overestimated the mind in Education, establishing a dichotomy with the Body, which is challenged by current knowledge.

Diverse forms of violence against women, children and elderly people constitute signs of dehumanization and their acceptance eventually pollutes all dimensions of social life. The awareness of victims suffering — which has been silenced until recently — is the result of social movements, cultural transformations, research and greater ethical concerns have lead to the production of public policies for its combatting.

All violence has a bodily dimension, as the body is the locus of lived experience(s) demanding from Education new perspectives and new stances for educational action. Sciences of Education have been producing knowledge and training in a systematic way, evidenced by post-graduations (Prevention of Gender Violence in the School and in the Family), sciences education masters specializations (Risk, Vulnerability and Violence 2010-11; Gender, Education and Citizenship 2006-09). In the social and historical perspective, the specializations of Cultural Heritage (2005-07; 2012-14) and on Culture (2016-18) as well as in Intercultural Dialogue (2006-08) have highlighted the emergency of the body in education ether as object of sanitizing (the hygiene social movement) and medical care, or as strengthening and body invigoration of the population, as well as the locus of presentation and re-presentation of the individual, the social, and the symbolic. 

In this specialization, the focus will be a liberatory interdisciplinary educational approach taking into consideration gender, embodiment and violence, crossing historical, anthropological, sociological, cultural studies and feminist studies perspectives.

 

• Education, Politics and Democracy: Youth participation and citizenship

 

Education is key to build democracy, and it continues to be a significant predictor of civic and political participation. In recent years, scenarios of economic, political and climate crisis have brought challenges to democracy in the form of threats to social and intergenerational justice. These threats require an effort to imagine new relationships between education and politics. On the one hand, youth groups are among the most vulnerable to political marginalization, deepened in the intersection with dimensions of socio-educational inequality and instrumentalized by discourses of populism and disinformation. On the other hand, youth groups practice citizenship in increasingly broader ways, individually and collectively, on the street and at school, in social movements and social media, through visual and performative formats. It is, therefore, crucial to link different contexts where new political and educational imaginaries emerge.

This domain is based on research developed at CIIE, around political education in formal, non-formal and informal contexts, based on interdisciplinary efforts, participatory approaches, and mixed methods. Specifically, its aim is to potentiate the acquisition of knowledge and skills that enable students to:

1. understand the transformations in youth political cultures, the role of social media in politicization and the development of the interrelationship between education and politics – at everyday, associative and institutional levels;
2. investigate political action, offline and online, as a pedagogical and democratic learning experience, with implications for problematizing education practices in activism and forms of activism in education;
3. develop intervention projects that deepen the connection between different educational contexts (schools, NGOs, municipalities, social movements) and promote the participation and the socio-political and educational empowerment of groups at risk of exclusion;
4. critically assess the potentialities and limits of the school as an arena for democracy, considering the curriculum and the practices of education for citizenship at the interface with the community;
5. design socio-educational strategies that mobilize digital tools and facilitate the integration of youth agendas by institutional policies, local authorities, and civil society organizations.
   
   

• Evaluation and Quality Assessment in Education: Policies and practices

 

Evaluation and quality assessment have been assuming a great centrality and relevance in the political coordination of educational systems and in institutional strategies, with impacts on educational processes, at European, national and institutional levels. In order to respond to the needs for specialised training in this field, this domain is organised around evaluation policies and practices in education. Firstly, the focus is on the analysis of evaluation policies, institutional and pedagogical assessment of quality in education as political technologies. Secondly, it takes on the evaluation in education at different levels of the educational system, institutions and educational evaluation itself, with emphasis on its practical aspects, particularly at the level of reconfiguration of professional intervention.

The domain is aimed at students, teachers and other professionals aiming at the acquisition of knowledge and skills that enable them to act at the level of project design and development of evaluation processes and institutional and pedagogical management in different areas of the educational field.

More specifically, it is intended that students acquire knowledge and skills that enable them to:

• reflect and investigate policies, structures and processes of evaluation and institutional and pedagogical management of quality;
• contribute to the development of reflexivity of professional practices, namely in the areas of international, institutional and educational evaluation
• integrate structures and processes of educational quality management and external/internal monitoring, auditing and control.

Students will be given the possibility to get involved in research projects in the areas of evaluation studies and the option for the internship will be supported by the insertion in institutional contexts, in order to favour the initiation to autonomous professional practice and integration in the professional environment.

 

• School, Participation and Digital Technologies

The challenges posed by the digital transition are being felt in the most diverse spheres of society, causing changes in policies and contexts of education/training, with visible effects on the conditions of participation and educational intervention inside and outside schools. These effects are felt, on the one hand, through the exponential increase in the quantity and variety of information and digital resources available, the growing possibilities of personalization of learning environments and situations, as well as the diversity of means of collaboration and communication inside and outside the classroom. On the other hand, the phenomenon of digital exclusion coexists, as a consequence of both the lack of access to digital technologies and the lack of skills for their critical use and of equitable conditions for participation in society. The domain "School, Participation and Digital Technologies" is inserted in the confluence of theoretical and practical knowledge of the intervention areas: "School Education, Participation and Digital Technologies", in a proposal that aims to promote the acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills that allow students to: i) position themselves critically about policies, programs and challenges of the digital transition and participation in schools and in other educational contexts; ii) design practices with digital technologies in educational action; ii) develop research/intervention projects at school and in other educational contexts.

In the 2022-2024 edition, this course is organized with the following domains:

• Education, Arts and Citizenship(s)

This proposal is based on the assumption of a strong articulation between education, arts and citizenship in a relationship of mutual questioning and reinforcement. It takes advantage of the training, knowledge, and experience of the applicants, which includes participation in national and international projects relevant to the understanding and deepening of the themes.

From a perspective of lifelong education, with different population groups and in the most diverse contexts, it advocates the need and possibility of developing an education with the arts, in an emancipatory framework, that is, enhancing the discovery and assertion of the personal voice, as a constitutive dimension of the construction of citizenships of unique subjects, inserted in social groups and particular power relations.

This approach proposes a more holistic view of the human being and of its potential for cultural and social production, as author and actor of history/herstory. Beyond unveiling the social inequalities present and reproduced by education, this domain explores a view of possibility in education, as a socio-educational process built with people and with the communities. Learning with the arts configures another education, as an ethical, aesthetic, and solidary experience, which creates space for the exercise of citizenship and can provoke the empowerment of population groups under conditions of disadvantage, discrimination and exclusion.

• Education, Communities and Social Change: Education and International Development Cooperation

The domain “Education, Communities and Social Change” seeks to promote the development of research and intervention modes attentive to the dynamics of local and participatory construction of education and training processes and to the socio-political dimensions that surround and shape them. In this edition (2022/2024), there will be a specific focus on Education issues in the context of International Development Cooperation.

Intervention in Development Cooperation processes in the field of Education carried out by different social movements and actors (from public institutions to NGOs) raises questions and challenges in the field of educational reflection and practice. It also highlights spaces and forms of professional intervention where Masters in Educational Sciences can find their social relevance, whether from the point of view of research, consultancy, evaluation and/or intervention.

It is intended, in this domain of specialization, to present and discuss the ways in which the role of Education in processes of Cooperation for Development is equated. To this, it will be central:

Problematize the conception(s) of development and the roles it assigns to Education, namely in contexts of International Cooperation;

Analyze what is understood by Development Cooperation and the ways in which these practices have been transformed and politically organized;

Reflect on processes of construction and development of projects and processes of socio-educational intervention within the scope of cooperation in education.

Therefore, this domain of specialization intends to integrate the discussion of the political, social, cultural and economic dimensions of development processes into the field of educational reflection, in a logic in which the educational dimension of political and social intervention will be highlighted.

• Evaluation and Quality Assessment in Education: Policies and practices

Evaluation and quality assessment have been assuming a great centrality and relevance in the political coordination of educational systems and in institutional strategies, with impacts on educational processes, at European, national and institutional levels. In order to respond to the needs for specialised training in this field, this domain is organised around evaluation policies and practices in education. Firstly, the focus is on the analysis of evaluation policies, institutional and pedagogical assessment of quality in education as political technologies. Secondly, it takes on the evaluation in education at different levels of the educational system, institutions and educational evaluation itself, with emphasis on its practical aspects, particularly at the level of reconfiguration of professional intervention.

The domain is aimed at students, teachers and other professionals aiming at the acquisition of knowledge and skills that enable them to act at the level of project design and development of evaluation processes and institutional and pedagogical management in different areas of the educational field.

More specifically, it is intended that students acquire knowledge and skills that enable them to

• reflect and investigate policies, structures and processes of evaluation and institutional and pedagogical management of quality;
• contribute to the development of reflexivity of professional practices, namely in the areas of international, institutional and educational evaluation;
• integrate structures and processes of educational quality management and external/internal monitoring, auditing and control.

Students will be given the possibility to get involved in research projects in the areas of evaluation studies and the option for the internship will be supported by the insertion in institutional contexts, in order to favour the initiation to autonomous professional practice and integration in the professional environment.

 

• School, Community and Democracy - Pedagogy, literacy and innovation

The problem of pedagogical innovation is a field marked by tensions and contradictions that force an effort of conceptual clarification, which leads us to value Epistemology as a reference area that has been underestimated. This is a tendency that can be explained, in large measure, by the weight that Psychology, as an area seen as revealing the contours of educational actions in schools, assumed in the movement of refusal of the paradigm of instruction. Focusing on students and their personal and social development, this trend contributed to devalue the culturally validated heritage of information, instruments, procedures and attitudes, thus devaluing the epistemological reflection on this heritage. In this sense, the educational debate is impoverished and generated a set of conceptual impasses that, in some way, have hindered the reflection with evident damages in the field of teacher training, in the research field and in the public debate itself about the transformation of school education projects. It is urgent to demonstrate the misconceptions that have been nurtured by the pedagogical paradigm of learning (Trindade & Cosme, 2010)¹ and to explore the conceptual possibilities that open up with a reflection within is the relationship between students, in its singularities, and the culturally validated heritage, in its particularities, which becomes the focus of teachers' attention.

If this dimension is one dimension that structures the domain of the Master in Sciences of Education that we have to dynamize, it is important to take into account another dimension that concerns the need to value the development of students' literacy, in the most diverse areas of knowledge, as a goal of school education projects in the contemporary world. It is this objective that justifies, once again, the importance of epistemological reflection as an essential component of the debate about the meanings of pedagogical innovation projects.

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[1] Trindade, Rui; Cosme, Ariana (2010). Educar e aprender na Escola: Questões, perspectivas e respostas pedagógicas. V. N. de Gaia: Fundação Manuel Leão.