The supervision of Bachelor's and Master's theses at the Institute of Education Studies should only be carried out by employees with a doctorate, at least one of whom must belong to the group of professors. The working group members have provided detailed information in the Institute's PANDA course EW.

Topics for theses

Final theses serve on the one hand as an in-depth examination of a scientific topic and on the other hand as proof of the ability to carry out guided scientific work. Depending on the level of qualification to be achieved (i.e. Bachelor's, Master's or state examination), students are expected to work independently on a scientific topic under the guidance of their supervisors to an appropriate extent, either theoretically and/or empirically, and to present their findings in writing.

For Bachelor's theses (two-subject Bachelor's degree, teaching degree), Paderborn University allows eight weeks to complete the thesis. As a rule, Bachelor's theses comprise structured literature research or smaller empirical projects that are suitable for answering a scientific research question.

Paderborn University offers 12 weeks for state examination theses (teaching degree). For empirical theses, the processing time can be extended by two months upon application. For Master's theses (two-subject area, teaching degree), four months are allowed. For theses at state examination or Master's level, Prof Dr Harteis generally expects independent empirical work that deals with a question relevant to Education Studies.

Students are welcome to suggest their own topics. However, the Educational Management and Educational Research in Continuing Education working group will also be happy to suggest a topic for your thesis that ties in with the working group's current research projects. The group is particularly interested in the following topics:

• Workplace-related learning processes (learning at the workplace, workplace learning)
• Learning motivation in school and non-school (especially vocational) settings
• Transfer between learning and application contexts (learning transfer)
• Participation in and effectiveness of continuing education
• Below you will find some more specific research topics that the group has worked on in the past or is currently working on (sorted alphabetically):
• Career choice motives of people in transition phases (school to apprenticeship, school to university)
• Deliberate practice in extracurricular fields
• Effects of intrinsic learning motivation in school and extracurricular settings
• Personal initiative, proactivity and proactive personality
• Influence of digitalisation trends (work/industry 4.0) on the learning of working people
• Factors influencing participation in further training
• Factors influencing intrinsic motivation to learn in school and non-school settings
• Decision-making in non-routine situations
• Promotion of applicable knowledge
• Learning in internships
• Mental simulation as a learning process
• Person-Environment-Fit
• Professionalisation of further education staff
• Replication of classical studies (e.g. in the field of learning strategies)
• Structures of applicable knowledge
• Activity analyses in continuing education
• Relationship between epistemic beliefs and perception of learning opportunities

Further information

By deciding to work on a thesis with Prof. Dr. Harteis, you also commit to participating in the joint research colloquium (Tuesdays or Wednesdays, 6-8 p.m., please contact Prof. Dr. Harteis for the specific date), in which the current status of the individual theses is presented and discussed.

In addition to the submission of the final thesis in printed form as required by the various examination regulations, all final theses at the AG Bildungsmanagement und Bildungsforschung in der Weiterbildung must also be submitted in electronic form as a PDF.

You can find information on the formal design of your thesis in the guidelines "On the formal design criteria of scientific work" of the Institute of Education Studies. You can download the document here. Further information can be found here on the page under"Guidelines".

Online resources for literature research can be found on our homepage in the field"Web resources".