Curriculum Proposal 2018 – Current
1. Professional Development Area
The professional development area consists of four subjects associated with areas where managers work, precisely those in which research has produced evidence that their work significantly affects the results achieved by school networks and units.
The disciplines in the professional development area have four credits, corresponding to 15 hours of face-to-face activities and 45 hours of distance activities. Students must take one course in each discipline (Total: 20 credits).
The subjects and their disciplines are described below:
(i) Curricula and Professional Development: The public education manager must be able to support teachers in the exercise of their teaching activities, ensuring the conditions for the professional development of the teaching staff. This development occurs through ongoing training and the intellectual contribution of the manager to the search for the best teaching strategies and the encouragement of study and exchange of experiences between professionals. These actions are based on a commitment to student learning and the belief that everyone can learn, subject to the fundamental right to education. The exercise of educational leadership extends to the management of basic education curricula so that the teaching programs implemented by school networks and units meet the needs of students in all their diversity, ensuring the achievement of educational objectives and the priorities and goals set by schools and other public education management bodies.
This subject is made up of two disciplines:
a. Professional Development and Public Education Management
b. Curriculum and Professional Development
(ii) Assessment and Planning: The public education manager must be able to regularly evaluate student performance, support external assessment programs, and make their results a reference shared by the management team and teachers. The planning of school activities and the drafting of the School Development Plan must be based on well-defined objectives that gain the support of the entire school community. The programs and decisions implemented to remedy the problems diagnosed must, in turn, be monitored, and their results checked against the original expectations and projections.
This subject is made up of two disciplines:
a. Assessment of Educational Programs and Policies
b. Assessment and Educational Indicators
(iii) Management and Leadership: The public education manager must develop effective administrative procedures, routines, and systems that ensure a learning school environment and allow for student performance monitoring. The division and assignment of responsibilities to team members, fostering cooperation among school community members, and the administration’s commitment to equity, justice, and diversity are among the skills and attitudes that ensure efficient and ethical management of public education.
This subject is made up of two disciplines:
a. Educational Leadership and School Management
b. Leadership and Management for Diversity
(iv) Policies and Institutions: The public education manager must be able to participate in the processes of change in public education, responding actively and critically to the demands for a more effective, fair, and democratic school. Therefore, it must be an agent of change, dialoguing with communities, their institutions, and representatives, forming opinions, and gaining support for public education reform processes that will ensure quality education for all and overcome the current patterns of unequal educational opportunities.
This subject is made up of three disciplines:
a. Democracy, Law and Public Policy
b. Administration and Financing of Public Education
c. Legislation and Local Policies
2. Area of Cross-sectional Studies
The disciplines in cross-sectional studies seek to integrate the topics covered in the four professional development subjects by using case studies and, in general, problem-solving learning methods. The four disciplines are grouped into two thematic sub-areas: the pedagogical management of education and the reform of public education.
The disciplines in cross-sectional studies have four credits, corresponding to 15 hours of face-to-face activities and 45 hours of distance activities. The student must take one of the two disciplines in the pedagogical management sub-area and all the disciplines in the public education reform sub-area (Total: 12 credits).
(i) The Pedagogical Management of Education: Actions directly associated with the pedagogical management of education bring together knowledge and skills dealt with in particular in two subjects, Curricula and Professional Development and Assessment and Planning. Two disciplines are offered to integrate the treatment of issues relating to the professional development of teachers, the design of teaching programs, and the assessment of student performance, one focusing on teaching in the area of literacy and the other on mathematics education. The problem of alignment between curricular proposals, the organization of teaching and the professional development of teachers, and the instruments and references of assessment processes are addressed in school management and the broader universe of the management of education systems.
a. Pedagogical Management for Literacy
b. Pedagogical Management in Mathematics Education
(ii) The Reform of Public Education: This heading brings together the varied set of problems that comprise the agenda of public policies that seek to transform the basic education offered by the education networks and units maintained by the federated entities. Of particular importance are (i) the financing of basic education, (ii) the federative system of collaboration, (iii) the initial and continuing training of teachers and the establishment of teacher certification standards, (iv) the remuneration, careers and working conditions of education professionals, (v) the mechanisms for selecting managers and the training and certification standards, especially for public school principals, (v) the curricula, teaching programs and educational technologies, (vi) the management of school progression, (vii) the accountability of managers and teaching staff, and work incentive systems, (viii) systems for evaluating the performance of students and educational institutions and their alignment with curricular proposals and professional development and teacher training programs, (ix) the setting of performance goals, (x) policies to support students staying in school. This agenda of studies, public debate, policy formulation, and implementation encompasses the complex process of transition from a model of public education management centered on bureaucratic control of administrative processes and a multitude of rules to a new model based on school autonomy and the assessment by society and public authorities of the educational results achieved by school networks and units. The treatment of this agenda through the study of empirically constructed problems and the analysis of selected cases mobilizes the knowledge and skills worked on in the curricular components of the four subjects.
There are two disciplines:
a. Public Education Reform Issues
b. Introduction to Research
3. Basic Development Area
The basic development area brings together two disciplines to promote new attitudes in managers towards their profession and career. One is to reflect on their history in the context of the profession and the transformations that have characterized the country’s history and the constitution of a democratic state. The other is to stimulate the manager’s creativity, making them experience situations in which art recreates the meaning of everyday experience.
a. Arts Workshop
b. Life and Career Histories
The Arts Workshop and Life and Career Histories have one credit, exclusively face-to-face activities.
All disciplines in the basic development area are compulsory (Total: 02 credits).
4. Special Topics
The disciplines in the Special Topics area carry one credit, corresponding to 15 hours of classroom activities, and provide an ever-renewed treatment of the themes that structure the program. They are:
a. Topics in Public Education Reform
b. Topics in Educational Assessment
c. Topics in Educational Leadership and Management
d. Topics in Knowledge Management
e. Topics in Curriculum and Science Education in Secondary Schools
f. Topics in Cognition and Teaching and Learning Processes
g. Topics in Social Economy
h. Topics in Comparative Education
i. Topics in Cognition and Teaching and Learning Processes: Education and Information and Communication Technologies
The student must take three special topics disciplines throughout the course, plus Topics in Cognition and Teaching and Learning Processes: Education and Information and Communication Technologies (Total: 04 credits).
5. Writing the Dissertation
In a course strongly oriented toward professional practice, the dissertation should take on the character of an Educational Action Plan. It should be based on an empirically based diagnosis and mobilize the repertoire of knowledge, techniques and cases dealt with throughout the course. The master’s dissertation is divided into three stages, each corresponding to a discipline: in the first, the student defines the management case they are going to study, delving into the Case Study methodology, culminating in the production of their research project and their field research, with the support of research seminars and individual guidance for data collection and processing; in the second, also with the support of seminars and individual guidance, the student begins to produce their Educational Action Plan, debating with their supervisor and other students the possible strategies for tackling the problem identified; in the third and final stage, the student will receive support through web conferences, seminars and face-to-face meetings for the completion and defense of their master’s dissertation, assessed by an examining board.
There are three disciplines:
a. Master’s Dissertation: Field Research
b. Master’s Dissertation: Educational Action Plan
c. Master’s Dissertation: Elaboration of the EAP
Disciplines in the area of Dissertation Elaboration (Total: 12 credits)
6. Qualifications and Titles
To obtain a master’s degree, students must complete 50 compulsory credits and take part in two important exams: the qualifying exam and the dissertation defense. At the end of the first year of the course, the student will take a qualifying exam, comprising the presentation to a board of examiners of their master’s dissertation project in development, made up of three sections: (i) basic development; (ii) public education reform issues; (iii) analysis of a management case. After passing the qualifying exam and during the second year of the course, the student completes his master’s dissertation and presents it to an assessment board for defense. Once the defense is passed and the mandatory credits are obtained, the student is eligible to apply for the Master’s degree in Public Education Management and Assessment.