Educational Sciences

Eligibility Criteria

Only university graduates of Master's degree programmes with a corresponding or similar specialization can be admitted to the doctoral study programme (full-time or combined mode) after passing an entrance examination.

You do not have to come to Brno personally to take the entrance exam. The result of the admission process depends on the quality of the documents that you provide. Those will be assessed by the admission committee and you will be notified about the results via e-mail.

Terms of Admission

It is recommended that you choose and contact your supervisor before sending your application. For more information, please contact Mgr. Roman Švaříček, Ph.D. at svaricek@mail.muni.cz .

1. Meet the eligibility criteria set out in the paragraph above.
2. Submission of an electronic application in the Masaryk University Information System.
3. Submission of a research proposal for the doctoral dissertation (in English).
4. Submission of a list of published works (if any).
5. Submission of an academic Curriculum Vitae (in English).
6. Submission of an officially attested copy of the applicant's Master's degree (recognition of a foreign university degree, if applicable).
7. Demonstrate English-language skills at the C2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language.
8. Receive a positive recommendation from the Education Doctoral Studies Committee, which is based on an oral entrance examination and a complex evaluation of the materials set out in Items 1 to 7.

Entrance exam

The evaluation of the applications will be done in two steps:

1. Evaluation of the submitted documents.
2. An oral interview via Skype.

Contents of the oral entrance examination

1. The extent of preparedness for academic research.
2. Applicant's conception for the major specialization in terms of the studied subject.
3. The dissertation project.
4. Language skills.

Applications Filing Period

1 January - 30 April for the enrollment in the Fall semester
1 July - 31 October for the enrollment in the Spring semester

Documents set out above in the Terms of Admission are required to be provided in digital form and attached to the online application by April 30th or October 31st.

Contact

admission@phil.muni.cz

The aim of the doctoral studies program is to provide a scientific education in the fields of education and andragogy. A graduate with a doctoral degree in the educational sciences program is ready for highly professional scientific research activity in the field of education. Graduates possess the knowledge and skills of basic and advanced teaching disciplines, the methodology of educational research, the design and execution of empirical research and the evaluation of its results, and the ability to disseminate research results to the professional community and collaborate with experts from other universities at national and international levels.

For continuing scientific careers, long-term foreign experience in postdoctoral positions is actively promoted for graduates.

Main research topics:

- Distributed leadership in schools

- Adult education in the world (comparative study)

- School climates through pupils’ eyes

- Communication between pupils in group classes

- Digital technologies in formal and informal learning (life) for children, young people, and adults (digital technologies in school, family, work; digital technologies as part of normal day-to-day activities in different contexts and environments including virtual environments)

- Informal learning for school leaders

- The role of pupils’ language equipment in their involvement in teaching communication

- Arguments in dialogic teaching

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• - equipped with a deep knowledge of the theories of educational science with support for Czech and foreign literature;
• - plan, implement, and analyze empirical investigations of a qualitative and quantitative nature;
• - write high-quality technical texts published on the international science scene;
• - work in the Czech and international community with leading scientific experts and their teams.

Successful graduates are able to pursue separate and highly professional scientific research activities in the field of teaching, to design and implement pedagogical research and to evacuate its results, to convey the results of their research to the professional community, and to collaborate with experts from other places of work at national and international levels.

The graduates of our doctoral studies program are very well prepared for scientific work, as evidenced by the fact that they are successfully hired at many Czech universities and continue to work in the field. Our graduates are employed by the Technical University of Ostrava, the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University, the University of Pardubice, Mendel University in Brno, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, the University of Hradec Králové, the Global School of Science in Nepal, the Royal University of Bhutan, and Comenius University in Bratislava. A detailed list of graduates is available here: https://pedagogika.phil.muni.cz/pro-applicants/doctoral-studies/pedagogy/graduates.

Doctoral student practice takes four forms: (A) doctoral students are involved in empirical research conducted in the workplace, resulting in the acquisition of methodological skills from senior academic staff directly in the conduct of the research; (B) students learn to write professional articles using their own empirical data in the course of the Copyright Workshop; (C) in the context of a foreign study semester placement, students attend prestigious universities and adopt new methods of data analysis; (D) doctoral students gain practical teaching experience in their trainers’ courses, tandem classes, and courses of the Pedagogical Competence Development Centre (CERPEK).

In their dissertations, students present the original results of their work, which they produced during their studies in the doctoral program. A body of at least three high-quality texts published in prestigious scientific journals can also be recognized as a dissertation, and the student provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject and commentary. The dissertation is written in Czech, Slovak, or English. The dissertation work is always submitted electronically through IS MU and in three printed copies. The recommended minimum number of characters in the thesis is 144,000 (including spaces). All references to literature must meet APA standards, and work must follow the ethical rules of empirical research.