Duration
Number of credits
| Master of education, Section 4: Social sciences | 20 crédits |
Lecturer
Collégialité
Coordinator
Language(s) of instruction
French language
Organisation and examination
All year long
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
An independent project supervised by a panel comprising a supervisor and two examiners.
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
Through the writing of this personal dissertation, the student demonstrates their ability:
- to transform an initial interest in an educational, pedagogical and/or didactic issue into a subject for research and/or experimentation;
- to gather all the information needed to frame this issue effectively;
- to carry out a review of the current state of knowledge regarding this issue;
- to identify social science research or studies on the subject, to summarise them and to extract the elements most useful for the design of the research and/or experimental framework;
- to formulate either a relevant research question to serve as a guiding principle, or a question that is (1) free from any ideological implications and normative concerns, (2) specific and precise, (3) verifiable, including from a practical and/or technical perspective, or an approach to experimenting with a teaching method and evaluating that method;
- to propose one or more working hypotheses that will guide the data collection;
- to develop a methodological framework aimed at data collection or teaching experimentation;
- to analyse the data collected and produced, and to extract from it elements likely to confirm or refute the proposed hypotheses or to reorient the initial research question or the experimental framework;
- to write a concise and well-structured dissertation summarising this research work.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
A thorough understanding of subject-specific content and the French language.
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
Supervision by a supervisor and two examiners.
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Face-to-face course
Further information:
Support for research and/or the design of an educational resource is based on regular meetings between the student and their supervisor.
Course materials and recommended or required readings
Written work / report
Further information:
Please note!
The following will not be accepted: dissertations containing plagiarism (see the rules on plagiarism at https://www.student.uliege.be/cms/c_11161787/ fr/student-prevenir-le-plagiat), those involving excessive and unspecified use of Artificial Intelligence, and theses of fewer than 60 pages or more than 70 pages (unless an explicit exemption has been granted by the supervisor).
In the research and/or experimental process, and when drafting the written dissertation, the only permitted uses of AI - provided explicit mention is made of its use - are those relating to:
- spelling and grammar checks;
- translation from another language;
- assistance in complying with bibliographic referencing standards (APA standards);
- the creation of multimedia content (images, audio, videos).
The dissertation is defended by the student during a session organised as follows: (1) a 10-15-minute summary of the work carried out (the aim is not to summarise the dissertation but to highlight one or other aspect of the research) and to suggest avenues for further research; (2) comments and questions from the members of the examination board; (3) the student's responses.
The quality of the student's work will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria (for guidance only):
- the ability to produce a critical analysis of the subject under study;
- knowledge of the subject under study;
- mastery of theoretical content;
- the quality of the methodological approach;
- the quality of the data collected and produced;
- the relevance, coherence and originality of the analyses presented;
- the quality of the argumentation;
- the ability to critically analyse the work carried out;
- the quality of the summary presentation of the dissertation;
- the quality of the answers provided to the examination board's questions;
- the quality and care taken in the drafting of the dissertation.
If the panel considers that the shortcomings of the thesis are such that they cannot be addressed during the oral defence, the supervisor will inform the student that the oral defence will not take place and explain the reasons for this decision.
Work placement(s)
Organisational remarks and main changes to the course
Students who do not submit their dissertation or fail to defend it during the May-June or August-September sessions are required to enrol for an additional year of study (at the full rate). Defending the dissertation in January of this new academic year is only permitted for students who have no further credits to complete during the second term.
Since the 2015-2016 academic year, the University of Liège Library Network has been making PDF versions of dissertations by students from the Faculty of Social Sciences available online, provided they have an overall mark of 14/20 or higher (published online after the results have been announced), provided that both the student and the supervisor have given their consent and that the dissertation is not confidential.
The references and abstracts (approved by the supervisors) of all dissertations (regardless of the mark obtained) will be available online.
Students must take all necessary steps with regard to ethical matters. To do so, they may undertake independent reading and visit the website of the ULiège Ethics Committee for the Humanities and Social Sciences: www.recherche.uliege.be/cms/c_11292422/fr/comite-d-ethique-en-sciences-humaines-et-sociales , but their main point of contact on this matter is their supervisor.
Students must take all necessary measures regarding the protection of personal data: https://www.student.fass.uliege.be/cms/c_4540199/fr/fass-rgpd-reglement-general-relatif-a-la-protection-des-donnees-personnelles
Contacts
Jean-François Guillaume, Professor
Social Sciences Didactic
Office 1.90, Building B31, 3 Place des Orateurs, University of Liège at Sart Tilman
04 366 35 03 Jean-Francois.Guillaume@uliege.be