You will start with the introductory course Intervention Research and the course Methods and Statistics in Education Research. In addition, you choose two elective courses in the first year, and follow the second statistics course Multilevel Data Analysis and the course Academic Skills. You will also work on your Research Internship on a self-chosen topic, under supervision of one of the research master staff members.

In the second year you follow the statistics course Structural Equation Modelling and choose three elective courses. Over the course of the second year, you will work on your final research master thesis.

Students taking the clinical route follow courses in diagnostics and treatment instead of two elective courses. After completion of the research master, you follow an additional clinical internship in the third year.

Students carry out a research internship in the first year and a thesis in the second year. For the Research Internship, you will participate in the research group of the supervising staff member, and contribute to ongoing research of the research group, by carrying out part of the research and writing a research report. In this way, you will gain experience in all aspects of research.

For the second year’s thesis, you will choose a subject of research and a supervising staff member, and write a research proposal. After approval of the proposal, you will execute the research project and write a research report. You will present your thesis at one of the Graduate School’s Colloquia, to an audience of students and staff members.

Additional options 

In the programme students can either focus on child development, education or clinical topics, which all result in a Master of Science (MSc) degree. Focusing on clinical topics gives Dutch-speaking students the opportunity to take a fast track into the Dutch-taught master programmes Forensische Orthopedagogiek (Forensic Youth Care) or Orthopedagogiek (Orthopedagogics), qualifying them as “basis-orthopedagoog” (basic remedial educationalist), which allows them to follow continuation courses for clinical professions in the Netherlands.

The clinical route is meant for students who want to work as a clinical researcher or “science-practitioner” in the Dutch practice and want to be registered as a clinical diagnostician. To qualify for the official continuation courses and training for clinical professions in the Netherlands, you must

1. have a bachelor’s degree in pedagogy or psychology with a study programme that meets the requirements, and
2. follow the clinical route within the research master programme.

Please note that the clinical route is only open to Dutch-speaking students, as this route contains courses in Dutch and qualifies for the continuation courses for clinical professions in the Netherlands. In other countries other requirements apply.

Students in the clinical route can choose either the ‘Orthopedagogiek’ direction, or the ‘Forensische Orthopedagogiek’ direction.

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.