PhD Programme in Education

Are you inquisitive and interested in deepening your knowledge in a specific field? Are you passionate about a specific research question? Would you like to make a contribution to increasing knowledge concerning learning, education and development? Do you enjoy writing academic papers in English? Are you able to independently structure your tasks and your time and can meet deadlines? Then applying for a PhD position could be of interest to you.

Courses at the PhD-Level

Mandatory and optional courses in Education:

Courses at the PhD-Level

Your application in four steps

Step 1: Review our Research Groups to determine if our research interests match yours

Research groups at the Department of Education

Please note: contacting professors or associate professors before being admitted into the programme precludes them from evaluating your application.

Step 2: Carefully read through the admissions criteria and process for the PhD programme

General Admissions Criteria

In order to meet the general admissions criteria, the applicant must have completed a second-cycle degree/Master’s degree and completed courses equivalent to at least 240 Swedish higher education credits (hp/ECTS), of which at least 60 ECTS must be in the second cycle or have otherwise acquired equivalent knowledge in Sweden or elsewhere.

The General Admissions Criteria must be fulfilled by the closing date of the admissions round.

Special Admissions Criteria

In order to meet the Special Admissions Criteria, the applicant must have completed courses equivalent to at least 90 hp/ECTS and a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS in one of the following subject areas: education, international and comparative education, didactics, subject-specific didactics, child and youth studies, special education, pedagogical work,

or a teaching degree equivalent to at least 180 hp/ECTS, including a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS,

or a Bachelor of Arts in Study and Career Guidance, including a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS,

or completed courses equivalent to at least 90 hp/ECTS within another Social Science (including medical education) or Humanities subject area, including a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS.

In all cases, the thesis must address research questions relevant to educational issues, theories, and methods.

In addition, the applicant must have excellent spoken and written English language skills, which will be tested during the admissions round.

The General and Special Admissions Criteria must be fulfilled by the application closing date.

English language proficiency

The PhD programme requires excellent spoken and written English language skills since, for example, required courses are given in English.

English language proficiency is assessed during the application process: a degree project/thesis written in Swedish must include a summary in English of a maximum of 1 page using font size 12.

Applicants who are selected during the second assessment by the faculty experts are invited in for interviews and a language test. Spoken academic English proficiency is tested as part of the interview by the applicants answering some questions in English. The applicants' written academic English skills are tested by writing an abstract based on a peer-reviewed article. This test takes place after the interviews when the applicants will be handed an article for which to write the abstract within a given time limit.

Admissions Process

Those applications which fulfil the General and Special Admissions Criteria will be assessed based on the submitted research plan. Faculty members conduct this assessment.

A professor or associate professor who has a known bias towards an applicant (for example, are related to or have another personal relationship with or was a former supervisor) will not assess that application. In order to avoid bias, the applicant is expected to independently write their application without consultation from a departmental contact.

The research plans are made anonymous and then sent on to the supervisor group, a group of professors and associate professors at the department, who individually assign (without consultation) point values to each research plan, according to the following criteria:

Stringency of the research question and analysis of earlier work and of the research plan.
Familiarity with the research area of the intended research plan.
Methodological and theoretical understanding and the degree to which reflexivity is reached in the texts.
The qualities of planned research in relation to what it contributes to the discipline.
The intended study’s prospective ethical implications and possibility of an ethical review.
Ability to express themselves both written and verbally in an academic setting.
The planned study’s feasibility within the allotted time.

The point values are added together and the applications with the highest total values are sent on to the final assessment round where their entire application, including degree projects/theses, are assessed by a group of faculty experts, made up of a group of professors, who assess the applications according the criteria listed above.

The highest ranked applicants are then invited in for interviews and a test of their written and spoken English.

The final admissions decision is made by the departmental board, based upon the total point value assigned by the faculty experts.

The applicants are informed as soon as a decision has been made, during the first half of June.

Please note that if you are planning to conduct data collection abroad, you must locate external financing to cover your travel costs. The department is not able to cover these costs. It can also be difficult to combine lengthy data collection projects with required course work so be sure to consider if your research plan will be possible to complete within the time allowed.

We do not accept PhD applicants who plan to visit/collect data in countries or regions included on the Swedish Foreign Ministry travel warning list:

http://www.regeringen.se/uds-reseinformation/ud-avrader/

In addition, we do not accept PhD-projects which require interpreter services.