If you have an active interest in research, are looking for a challenge, value an international and highly interactive programme, are motivated to learn more about how to conduct research in the field of child development and education and have the ambition to become a researcher, possibly combining it with other (clinical) tasks, the research master is the right programme for you.

Students with a university level bachelor’s degree in a related field can also apply. Whether you are eligible to apply depends on to what extent your previous education contained courses in the field of child development and/or education, (developmental) psychology, and methods and statistics of social science research. If you are unsure about your eligibility, please contact us before submitting a full application file.

Yes, a pre-master’s programme in the field of child development or education also gives access to the research master’s programme. However, the selection procedure still applies.

The clinical route is only open to Dutch-speaking students with a bachelor that includes sufficient clinical elements, as this route qualifies for the continuation courses for clinical professions in the Netherlands and prepares you to work in the Dutch clinical practice. The clinical route therefore also consists of some courses in Dutch (the diagnostics and treatment practicals). Also, the clinical route is not very relevant to international students, as in other countries other requirements apply for working in clinical Practice. However, international students can still follow the clinical research master courses ‘Developmental and parenting problems’, ‘Learning and social-emotional disorders in educational contexts’, and ‘Criminal behaviour of juveniles’, and can choose clinical subjects for their thesis work.

In the research master, topics in the broad field of child development and education are addressed. Some examples of research lines with regard to child development are: child development and parenting in traditional and non-traditional families, the role of the father, the relation between temperament and parenting, the quality of professional child care, aetiology of abnormal child development (including anxiety, deficits in moral development, and juvenile delinquency), preventive and curative interventions targeting child-rearing problems and psychopathology.

Examples of research lines related to education are: social outcomes of education, instruction, learning processes and learning disorders, domain-specific learning (e.g. literacy, history, arts, mathematics, science), innovation in education, motivation and learning, philosophy of education, school segregation, student-teacher relationships, vocational education, educational policy.

Dependent on the courses you choose, these are topics you may encounter in the research master and you can choose these (or related) topics for your research internship and thesis.

In the introductory meeting of the Research Internship that will take place in September, researchers from the department will present their research lines and possible topics you can choose for your research internship or thesis. In addition, it is also possible to come up with your own topic if you already have a specific idea about what you would like to research. In that case, the thesis coordinator will help you to find a supervisor who has expertise on this topic.

No, you can choose disciplinary courses from both fields, and you could choose a research topic in the field of child development for your research internship and a research topic in the field of education for your thesis, or vice versa. There are also topics that are in the overlap of the two fields. So it is definitely possible to combine the two fields.

After finishing the research master, you are qualitied to apply for a PhD position and to conduct PhD research. In fact, many of our alumni indeed become PhD researchers either at the University of Amsterdam, another university in the Netherlands, or abroad, but it is also possible to work in a research position outside the university. However, you are also in a good position to apply for other vacancies, such as for policy adviser, data scientist or any other positions related to the field of child development and education.

For students who have followed the clinical track, many alumni choose for positions in clinical practice, often in combination with doing research, and work as a science practitioner.

International students can apply for a scholarship to cover their studies at the UvA. The University offers scholarships for exceptionally talented students from outside Europe. For more information, please check this website.”