Masters Degree in Practical knowledge

Approved by the board of Bodø Regional University 01.02.2001

40 Study points

Endorsement

The Norwegian department of education, on 22nd of February 2000, endorsed Bodø Regional University’s Masters Degree in Practical knowledge.  The course qualifies for a Cand. Polit. Masters degree.

The length, extent and level of the course.

The Masters Degree in Practical knowledge is organised as a part-time course, spread over 8 half-year semesters (4 years), giving 40 study points. 

Each semester comprises of:

·        Three to four assemblies, each lasting from between two and five days.  Some assemblies may be held outside of Bodø.  Students must cover their own travelling, accommodation, and other expenses.

·        10-14 full study days (7-8 hours) with lectures, evaluations and supervision.

·        Individual evaluation and supervision.  One-to-one supervision of obligatory course work connected to dissertations and examinations.   

·        Participation in a program of study groups between assemblies.  

Aims of the course

The course aims to qualify professionals to use their professional practise and their area of work as a basis for the further development of knowledge and competence.  Students will acquire knowledge about how professional practise, in the various vocations, can be developed to be a systematic part of the ground knowledge that the professions and vocational trainings are built upon. 

The study aims to give professional practitioners within different vocations a broader professional competence, and training in research methods, up to masters degree level, in connection with their own practical professional knowledge and in cooperation across vocations.  Candidates will acquire special competency to act as leaders and supervisors, and to be qualified to lead developmental work, personal development, continual (life-long) vocational learning, research and developmental work within the area of their profession.

Through the study, candidates should be qualified to take on professional leadership and supervision, organizing good learning environment, evaluation procedures, quality development, and interdisciplinary cooperation and problem solving.

The Masters Degree will:

Qualify for researching ones own and other’s professional work

Develop an experience and research based theoretical and practical professional foundation.

Develop the ability to evaluate ones own and others’ professional practise from ethical, societal, professional and scientific criteria.

Develop understanding for differing cultural characteristics within users, clients, students, etc.

Qualify for organizing, participating and leading interdisciplinary and across-agency collaboration to ensure a holistic service.

Candidates

This Masters Degree aims primarily at recruiting candidates who are professional practitioners within welfare professions in the educational, health and social services, The study will, however, also accommodate other professions that wish to develop a tighter relationship between theory and practice in their field.  A broad area of the recruitment is seen as advantageous to the study as it will strengthen interdisciplinary perspectives and contribute to a mutual reflection over professional questions.  Other likely professions include the police and journalists, both of which have training schools in Bodø.  In the long term, the number of professions incorporated in the study will increase.

The Masters Degree is directed towards practitioners with vocational training and experience of practice.  Candidates are practitioners who have completed a three-year vocational training at the college, university, or equivalent level.

Minimum requirements are:

Qualified basic vocational training at college or university.

Completed Cand. Mag. or equivalent (Bachelors Degree).

An average grade of 2.7 or better in the vocational training giving a basis for application

At least 3 years of relevant, full time practice.

The progression of the course towards a Masters Degree can be illustrated in this way:

• Masters degree in practical knowledge
• A 4-year part-time course (40 study points)

·        Minimum of 3 years relevant professional practice

·        A Bachelors degree including a basic professional training, such as:

          Nursing, Child care, Social work,  Pre-school work, Teaching, Law enforcement, Journalism

 contents, ORGANIZATION, and working form of the masters degree

Admissability to lectures:  Lectures are open to the public

Faculty staff:                           Professor Jens Ivar Nergård

                              Professor Ingela Josefson 

                      Associate professor Ruth H. Olsen

                             Professor Anders Lindseth

The Syllabus is 8000 pages. (200 pages per study point).   This includes 3500 pages of self-selected reading.

All topics have the code no. PF300P and a subject module code (70x) as shown in the table.

Examination

The traditional form for examination for a master’s degree is a written scientific thesis.  A master’s degree based on professional practice also requires other forms of work and documentation to do justice to the nature of the subject.

Experience-based knowledge is an important part of all practical knowledge.  This knowledge becomes apparent though active practice.   It can also be demonstrated with the help of examples and narratives.   A scientific essay can therefore be written in narrative language at the same time as the student demonstrates their familiarity with relevant research literature through reflections over these parts of the text.

1st. study year:          Part-examination 1: A scientific essay from the area of practice, an individual home-based exam.  Results count as 25% of the combined final assessment.  Examination code: PF300P 001

2nd study year:          Work requirement.  A shorter field study must be carried out to an approved standard. Examination code: PF300P 002

            Part-examination 2: A scientific text connected to fieldwork.  An individual, home-based paper.  Results count as 25% of the combined final assessment. Examination code: PF300P 003

3rd & 4th study years:       Part-examination 3 - Alternative A

A larger scientific essay text, built on experience-based ethnographic data, accompanying practical work: a development project, a demonstration or exhibition documented through the use of different media.  Examination code: PF300P 004.

Part- examination 3 - Alternative B

A written thesis.

            Both alternatives include a viva voce on a given subject and an oral examination connected to the scientific text/ thesis.  Examination code: PF300P 004

The scientific essay text/thesis will receive an independent grade.   The thesis is subject to an viva voce, which can influence the result by 3 tenth parts.  The result of the thesis counts as 40% of the combined final grade.

The oral examination is assessed separately and counts for 10% of the combined final grade.   Examination code PF300P 006.

Grades range from 1.0 to 6.0, with a 1/10 part scale.  1.0 is the best grade, with 4.0 is the minimum pass level.  Candidates with grades below 4.0 are designated to have “not passed”

The board of examiners consists of three members, two internal and one external.  One of the internal examiners will be the student’s supervisor.  All the board members must have competency at the Ph.D. levels within the college and university system.

Methods of study

A practice-based Masters Degree requires methods of working and documentation that facilitate research of practice.  Nursing, social work, teaching, journalism and policing are disciplines that are relatively new to researching.  The development of these professions at universities has been driven forward by the professions themselves and has been based on the need of professional development through research.  Being new to the university and colleges systems, these professions have needed to legitimise themselves as research disciplines, and this has not always benefited them as professions.  Their status and development has been marked by the tendency of traditional academic disciplines to generalise and theorise.  The professions' need for critical reflection over practices that they need to gain deeper understandings of, has moved into the background, as research has followed traditional, academic patterns. 

The professions entry into the college and university system has, in this way, led to their becoming increasingly academic and theoretical.  This is an international trend.

Vocational training that previously was largely based on a practical knowledge tradition, have, as university and college subjects, increasingly been incorporated into the academic tradition.  Important and complicated decisions-making skills, that are central to practice, are often only touch upon in principal in a theoretical training which is supposed to contribute to making professionals competent to such decision-making.  Despite their importance, there is no adequate form of training in these areas of professional activity.

Vocational subjects have their own peculiar presuppositions, in as much as they qualify for a particular area of work and thereby practice.  Training for a practical profession does not only involve mastering theory, it is also involves a systematic reflection over and about practice, and the application of theory to the development and improvement of practice.

Experience-based knowledge is an important part of all practical knowledge.  This knowledge is apparent in practice and can also be demonstrated with the help of examples and narratives.  The method of study in this course needs to bring out and show practical knowledge through descriptions of professional approaches to issues and reflections over issues in an experience-based and scientific manner.  This requires methods of study that encourage the description of professional experience. The scientific essay is suitable for bringing out professional issues.  A scientific essay can be written in narrative language, with narratives and examples from professional practice, at the same time as the student shows their familiarity with related research literature through reflections over the texts.  Other methods of study will include lectures, seminar groups and basis groups.

The lectures will present and take up themes connected with the curriculum and syllabus.  Seminar groups are multi-disciplinary, and are intended to allow discussion of the syllabus in relation to the intentions of the course and the students’ professional practices.  Seminar groups will also be used for supervision and as discussion forums for professional areas not covered by the syllabus.

Basis groups are multidisciplinary and geographically constituted, and are the students’ study groups between assemblies at the college.

To ensure the quality of the course, a process evaluation will be carried out after each assembly, and there will be a written evaluation at the end of each semester.

Description of subject modules

First year

PF300P 700 Theory of science and the concept of knowledge

Study points: 4

Semester: First semester (Autumn)

Department: Centre for Professional studies

Responsible for the module: Professor Jens Ivar Nergård in cooperation with professor Ingela Josefson.

Access to lectures: Open to the public

Course: Masters Degree in Practical knowledge.

The aims of the module and methods of study

The theory of science has a double function in this course.  In the first instance, the entire Masters Degree rests upon a scientific foundation, and so work with concepts, their formation and analysis takes a dominant position in the first two semesters.  In the second instance, the theory and philosophy of science constitute a central part of the syllabus throughout the course, though with the main emphasis on the two first semesters.  While the in first instance scientific theory constitutes the course’s scientific foundation and is thereby an integral part of the method of studying, in the second instance it is covered by traditional forms of teaching, through the syllabus, lectures and seminars. 

These two forms of scientific theory will not, however, function independently of each other in the course, but will support each other and form the basis for an exchange between practical scientific work and more traditional forms of acquiring theory.

In modern scientific theory a distinction has been made between propositional knowledge and knowledge by familiarity.  Propositional knowledge can, in this context, be understood as generalisations or principal considerations over a practical area that one is not necessarily a practitioner of.  Knowledge by familiarity can be understood here as the knowledge essential to the practice of a profession.

In the practical work of a social worker, pre-school teacher, nurse, police officer or journalist what really matters is the attention given to that which is unique in each person, whether they be clients, children, patients, suspects or interviewees.  This form of thoughtful awareness required by the practical situation – judgement – can be learnt little of in books.   One acquires these skills first and foremost through a many- faceted familiarity with the complexity of working.  Earlier, practically orientated vocational training often gave an inadequate theoretical basis for professional practice.  Today’s universities and colleges give students a thorough theoretical basis, but fall short on how to put theory into practice, how to combine theory and practice in a satisfactory way.  Students who have only acquired theoretical knowledge cannot be considered as fully trained.  Only when they are capable of integrating propositional knowledge and knowledge by familiarity are they capable of taking responsibility themselves for the further development of their own practice.