COURSEWORK REQUIREMENT IN THE FINNISH UNIVERSITIES DOCTORAL PROGRAMMES

Abstract

The article examines doctoral programmes in educational sciences (PhD in Education) in the Finnish universities. The main factors of doctoral programmes coursework requirement are determined. Among them: decentralization; realizing the legislative framework mostly based on university level and level of university school/faculty acts; existence of different organizational forms of studying; focusing coursework to support the doctoral thesis preparation; exact determining the content of doctoral programmes coursework; teaching courses by discipline faculties, jointly with other faculties, graduate schools, language centers etc.; doctoral programmes comprise studies in research methodology, philosophy, main discipline studies and academic writing courses; availability, on the one hand, common courses for all or most universities (Research Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Academic Writing, Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods etc.) and, on the other, courses which have no analogues in other universities (Introductions to Immaterial Property Rights, Changing global and European education policies etc.); implementing the practice of joint doctoral studying; availability of different forms of doctorates’ training; the majority of courses are offered in English; the studies are mainly graded using the pass/fail scale; doctoral programmes offered jointly by two universities with granted funding from the Academy of Finland; the Finnish Multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Network on Educational Sciences (FinEd) as consortium of universities providing doctoral education in educational sciences.