Organisation and Leadership – Master’s in Health and Welfare Administration or Educational Leadership

Master’s degree in Organisation and Leadership – Health and Welfare Administration or Educational Leadership.

This program is suitable for professionals seeking leading positions or management jobs in the educational, health or welfare sectors.The students should have an undergraduate degree and a few years of work experience.

The aim of this master’s programme is to give students an insight into theoretical and practical knowledge in organisational matters and leadership tasks. The main objective is to educate students with a professional background from the welfare, health- and educational sectors to management and independent tasks as project management, planning, development tasks, etc.

The following is required for acceptance to the programme:

• A bachelor’s degree or the equivalent in one of the professional areas covered by the master’s programme. Examples are Teacher Training, Pre-school Teacher Training, Social Education and Child Welfare Work, Nursery, Physiotherapy, etc.

• A general bachelor’s degree with relevant combinations of subjects

• A minimum of two years practical experience from the profession or sector. This requirement is dispensable under certain conditions, such as for example students under re-training.

Students may be directly accepted to the second part of the master’s programme. This applies to students with exams from the one year part-time study programme titled Educational Leadership or the part-time programme Health and Welfare Administration.

The different subjects focus on central issues and questions regarding responsibility for the running and developing operative units in the social and welfare sectors, as well as the educational sector. One subject is devoted to communication, staff development processes and multi-professional cooperation on ground level.

Two courses aim two deepen the students’ understanding of formal organisations. One course is an introduction to organisations and leadership. In a course in Leadership and Change in Organisations the students are introduced to concepts such as organisational learning, public reforms and theories of leadership in modern organisations.

Through introductory courses in Politics of Education and Politics of Health and Welfare, students are trained to analyse sector politics and policies as contexts for management and leadership in the educational and the heath and welfare sectors.

A course in the Methodology of Social Science prepares the students for their master thesis. The course aims to give an overview of different research strategies. It functions as an introduction for practical applications in the thesis.

Through the master thesis, the students are learning to formulate and implement a research project and to formulate a report in an inter-subjective, scientific language. Students are encouraged to choose research issues among challenges meeting them in their working lives. The emphasis of the thesis is supposed to be on theoretical understanding of empirical problems in the health and welfare sectors, or in the educational institutions.

The model below shows an overview of the different courses. The programme is divided into two separate areas of expertise, one for health and welfare administration and one for education leadership.

Organisation and Leadership – master’s in Educational Leadership

Step 1 and 2 can be taken as a one-year part-time study programme titled Educational Administration.

Whole courses or parts of courses are organised as joint seminars with students specialising in Health and Welfare Administration as it is shown below.

Master’s in Organisation and Leadership – Health and Welfare Administration:

Step 1 and 2 can be taken as a one-year part-time study programme titled Health and Welfare Administration.

The programme is built around a series of symposia involving lectures, discussion groups and group exercises. During these seminars the students will be introduced to varied and problem-oriented teaching methods, such as case studies, exercises, and project seminars with debates pertaining to their own project and those of their fellow students. These seminars are on a weekly basis, and between seminars the student is expected to work with assignments and literature from the course syllabus. The use of information and communication technology will be emphasised during the course of the programme. It is a requirement for the programme that the student has access to e-mail and the internet.

It is expected that the student works independently to ensure fulfillment of the requirements of the curriculum, as well as active participation in scheduled lectures and other work assignments.

The student is entitled to supervision and tuition with regard to the requirements of the syllabus.

No part of the program is planned abroad.

The student must have passed step 1 and 2 of the programme before starting on his/her thesis. The following elements are compulsory through the programme:

The model below shows how the study is normally is organised for the students.

Examination is closely related to the production of different kinds of text produced by the students. The table below shows an overview of all examinations.

Most textbooks are in Norwegian. A few books or papers may be in Danish, English and Swedish.