Pedagogical and Educational Sciences

The Department of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences studies the development, upbringing and (formal) education of children, both with regular and with special needs, in different branches or specializations. Our branch of General Pedagogy studies the general development and regular upbringing of children, whereas the Special Needs branch focuses on the upbringing and professional help for children with special needs, e.g. due to learning or behavioural problems. The Educational Sciences branch deals with the formal aspects of Education in schools and kindergartens. The Department moreover has a branch for the academic training of primary school teachers. All branches participate in the Exchange programme of the Department.

Ed-Xchange

The Department of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences coordinates Ed-Xchange, an international student exchange programme of the universities of Birmingham, Budapest, Dortmund, Oslo, Trondheim and Groningen. Ed-Xchange enables Bachelor students to study abroad at one of these universities and gain 30ECs during the autumn semester.

Challenging Youth

This elective programme is taught entirely in English and aims to acquaint students with the contribution that the pedagogical sciences make to analyses of and interventions in issues that may arise in child-rearing, collectivised in the notion of ‘challenging youth’. This process of familiarisation is done by presenting students with a dual set of perspectives on challenging youth. On the one hand, historical, theoretical, intercultural and socio-scientific conceptual resources—including for example gender and ethnicity—are deployed to show students a highly diverse and transnationally recognisable area of pedagogical care. On the other hand, typically Dutch forms of special needs responses are introduced that address problems by actively intervening in the national system of education, schooling and youth care. This programme is only offered in the autumn semester.

More information on the course offer can be found here.