Fields of Specialization

In the 2019-2021 edition, this course is organized with the following domains:

• Childhood, Family and Society - Issues and Problems in Education
• Education, Communities and Social Change
• School, Community and Democracy - Health Education

In the 2020-2022 edition, this course is organized with the following domains:

 

Education, Communities and Social Change
The domain "Education, Communities and Social Change" crosses the knowledge and intervention patrimony of two research areas - "Politics, Policies and Participation" and "Local Development and Adult Education" - in a training proposal that, globally, seeks to promote the development of research and intervention modes attentive to the dynamics of local and participatory construction of education and training processes, in problematics and with diverse publics, and to the sociopolitical dimensions that surround and configure them.

In particular, it is intended to provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to: (i) reflect on educational, social and community intervention policies, programs, projects and practices and their educational meanings and concepts of social change; ii) base and develop professional practices of socio-educational intervention in fields such as community intervention, youth and adult education and training, socio-cultural animation, training of trainers and other human development professionals.

In this edition there will be a specific focus on health community field and its educational, political and social implications. Specifically, it will include:

• understanding in which ways human rights and citizenship are inscribed in the reality of the communities, respecting their specificities and diverse health conditions;
• reflecting critically on the conditions in which social change is configured taking into account an ecological perspective of the communities.

Based on a theoretical framework about the health community theme, this domain is expected to contribute to the students thinking on the educational in its relationship with rights and participation in the communities. Institutions of the third sector, civil society organizations, as well as schools and other educational spaces, will constitute contexts with potential to plan and develop both research and intervention projects in this field.

 

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 an interdisciplinary educational approach taking into consideration gender, embodiment and violence, crossing historical, anthropological, sociological, cultural studies and feminist studies perspectives.

 

Higher Education: Policies, Institutional Governance, Management and Administration

This area of the Master on Education Sciences aims to promote the specialized training of students in the study of higher education policies, governance, management and administration. It is intended that they acquire knowledge and competences that enable them to:

1. reflect and research on policies, structures and institutional processes of management and administration of higher education;
2. contribute to the development of the reflexivity of professional practices, namely in the areas of academic education and organization, student support, employability, support for strategic studies, improvement of teaching and learning processes, communication and image, international relations and support for research and development;

• participate in research projects, namely in the field of institutional research, preparation of decision-making processes, monitoring and follow-up of external/internal audit and control processes.

Students will be given the opportunity to be involved in research projects in the fields of higher education studies and the option for the curricular internship will be supported by their insertion in institutional contexts, with a view to favoring the initiation to autonomous professional practices and integration into 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.

 ____________________

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

Fields of Specialization

In the 2017-2019 edition, this course is organized with the following domains:

• Administration, Management and Implementation of Leadership
• Education, Communities and Social Change
• Education, Gender, Body and Violence
• Education and Deafness. Bilingualism and Sign Language

In the 2018-2020 edition, this course is organized with the following domains:

• Art, Sustainability and Education
  This proposal is based on the concerns and findings of a set of international projects in which FPCEUP has participated as a partner over the years, exploring burning issues of our time. These projects allowed to identifying both the gaps in the current education and the possibilities to create and experience other forms of education in which a focus on learning through the arts, as an ethical, aesthetic and solidarity experience, allows the construction of a new perspective on education and about everyday life. This concern and goal are also articulated with a more holistic view of the world of life where a focus on sustainability and human development at all levels will allow foreshadowing more creative and sensitive approaches to education and the diversity of contexts where it has place. Education and training are understood as processes that occur in context, being developed and reconfigured within the network of relationships between children, young people and professionals. Therefore it makes sense that both education and training should simultaneously invest in working with the different groups involved in it, taking into account their specificity, complementarities and the reduction of potential conflicts.
  
  
• Education, Communities and Social Change
  The domain “Education, Communities and Social Change” crosses the heritage of knowledge and intervention of two research areas – “Policy, Policies and Participation” and “Local Development and Adults Education and Training” - in a proposal that, globally, seeks to promote the development of modes of research and intervention attentive to the dynamics of local/communitarian and participatory processes of education and training production, concerning diverse problems and various target groups, and the socio-political dimensions that involve and configure those dynamics. In particular, it aims to provide students with the acquisition of knowledge and skills that allow to: i) reflect on policies, programs, projects and practices of educational, social and community intervention and its educational meanings and conceptions of social change; ii ) support and develop professional practices of socio-educational intervention in fields such as community intervention, socio-cultural animation, youth and adults education and the training of trainers and other professionals in human development; iii ) develop , implement and evaluate intervention and consultation processes, anchored in participatory research procedures, in diverse problematics and with various target groups, enabling to (re)create social ties at the local and community levels and to influence the construction of a more equitable and resilient society.
  In this edition, there will be a specific focus on issues that connect education and media, reflecting on the ways in which both traditional (newspapers, radio, TV, etc.) and new media (social networks, digital platforms, video games, etc.) challenge and contribute to reconfigure the educational field and create new spaces for diverse educational practices (e.g. issues of media literacy, new educational technologies, edutainment) and new possibilities in terms of intervention for social change.
  
  
• Higher Education: policies, institutional governance, management and administration
  This domain aims to promote specific training of students in the area of higher education policies and institutional governance, management and administration. It is intended that they acquire knowledge and skills allowing: i) to reflect and research on institutional policies, structures and processes of management and administration; ii) to contribute to the development of reflexivity of professional practices, namely in the areas of academic training and management, of student’s support, of employability, of strategic studies and planning, of improvement of teaching and learning processes, of communication, of international relations, and of research and development support; iii) to participate in research projects, namely institutional research, preparation of decision-making processes, monitoring and follow-up of external/internal audit and control processes.
  The students will be given the possibility to participate in research projects in the areas of higher education studies and the option for the curricular internship will be supported by the participation in institutional contexts, with a view to favoring the initiation to autonomous professional practice and integration in the professional environment.
  
  
• Supervision and teacher education
  Focused generally on the problems currently challenging the School and in particular on the work of teachers to address these challenges, the domain of specialization is aimed at early childhood educators, primary and secondary school teachers and other professionals of the field of education whose professional practice establishes relations with school education and the work of teachers. Based on national and international research results, the domain aims to provide the acquisition of theoretical and methodological knowledge in the fields of supervision and teacher education, favoring a praxeological and critical approach. It will be requested to accredit the course to the Scientific-Pedagogical Council of In-service Teacher Education.

Contacts

Postgraduate Office 
T. | +351 22 042 89 20 
E. | spg@fpce.up.pt

Academic Department
T. | +351 22 042 89 00
E. | s_academico@fpce.up.pt

General information

Study Plan

Certificates

Predominant Scientific Areas

Previous Courses/Cycles of Study