Educational Policy and Administration

Professor Luís Miguel Carvalho

This doctoral course is oriented towards the study of educational policies in Portugal, based on a theoretical and methodological matrix which favours addressing policies as “public action” and is not focused exclusively on the intervention of the State and its administration. Instead, it takes into account the diversity of scenes and actors involved in the policy process, at different levels, as well as their multiple interdependences.

The main objective of the course is the articulation between knowledge and public action. This takes place through two main analytical dimensions:

• The regulation of public action, encompassing both the ways the rules orienting actors’ action are produced and applied, and the ways these very actors appropriate and transform them.
• The production and circulation of knowledge and its interaction with public action, highlighting the way different ideas and knowledge, both scientific and non-scientific, is produced, circulates and structures the elaboration and regulation of policies.

The research carried out by doctoral students shall concern different policies and processes of public action, problematizing the issues related to manners and tools of regulation and to processes of knowledge production and circulation:

• Regarding changes in the ways of governance and regulation of education, stressing the recognition and valuation of local actors’ initiatives, which knowledge is mobilized, how and with what effects, on the design and management of such policies and on these actors’ action?
• In a context marked by the expansion of knowledge and by the growing need to legitimize public policies, how are the interactions between social actors intervening in the production of specialized knowledge and in public action characterized and which effects do they produce?

Holders of a Master’s degree in Educational Sciences/Education, who wish to further their knowledge and develop a research project fitting the theme and objectives of the course, may apply. Holders of a Master’s in other specialties may also apply, as long as their professional and scientific curriculum is appropriate to the theme of the course. Exceptionally, holders of a Bachelor’s degree or legal equivalent may also apply, if they have a particularly relevant academic or scientific curriculum that is recognised by the Instituto de Educação as attesting their capacity to carry out doctoral studies.

The main way to enter the doctorate is by applying for an open tender for a Doctoral Programme according to the field and specialty, with the indication of the number of places available. This invitation to tender will be advertised through a public notice and is subject to compliance with specific rules and forms.

In the doctoral areas where there is no call for tender, candidates must send an application to the Scientific Council of the Instituto de Educação of the Universidade de Lisboa, formalizing their candidacy. Only in exceptional and duly justified cases may an individual candidacy enter the doctorate in a specialty area in years when an open tender took place.