The two-year Master's Degree Programme in Educational Sciences (120 ECTS) includes three thematic sub-programmes: 1) Lifelong Learning and Adult Education, 2) Science Education and 3) Primary Education.
Sub-programme Lifelong Learning and Adult Education offers students a lifelong learning perspective on Educational Sciences. The Programme focuses on the basics of education, lifelong learning, knowledge society and development of working life and on possible ways of fostering these through research. The studies open up comparative perspectives to questions pertaining to lifelong learning and expertise, educational policy, and educational research. The Programme studies focus as well on such topics as active citizenship, career counseling, life and educational paths of individuals and communities in various social and sociopolitical contexts. The Programme provides students with skills needed in international positions relating to education and adult education. More specifically, graduates from the Programme gain prerequisites for working as education coordinators, project coordinators, adult educators, researchers or career counsellors.
Science Education sub-programme offers students current perspectives on teaching, studying and learning concerning such domains as biology, chemistry, geography and physics. The sub-programme aims at widening students' world-view through various scientific key concepts and theories related to the paradigm of education through the understanding of the main correlations between natural sciences, technology, society and human beings. The sub-programme has a socio-scientific focus. The Programme provides students with the teaching knowledge needed mainly on primary and secondary school levels.
Primary Education sub-programme tackles global and current issues of education and pedagogy. The Programme, constituting the core of the Finnish expertise recognized worldwide, also provides an arena to develop student's theoretical and empirical understanding of primary education and children's development. In this sub-programme, an important research and development subject is the education, growth and development of primary school children on one hand, and the tailoring of the learning process in order to suit their needs, on the other. In the course of their studies, students will become familiar with how to apply their knowledge and skills to observation, monitoring and pedagogical evaluation of children's development, learning processes and learning environments.