Utførlig kursbeskrivelse er tilgjengelig et halvt år før kurset arrangeres. Dette kurset blir tilbudt av UiT Norges arktiske universitet andre kvartal 2023 og 2025, første kvartal 2027 og 2029.

Kurset blir avholdt 19. – 22. april 2027 ved UiT, campus Tromsø.

About the course

Good research depends on solid project design, including precise research questions and carefully planned strategies for data gathering. But how can we enhance the impact of our research? 

In this course, students will be presented with strategies to collaborate with and actively involve different stakeholders in social work research, how challenges in collaborating with service users, practitioners and leadership in social and child welfare services can be anticipated and quickly responded, and how to use research results to influence welfare policy and social work practice. Lectures and groupwork will focus on how 

• a collaborative relationship with relevant stakeholders can be established and maintained when building a net of respondents, and when identifying gate keepers to welfare services 
• service users can be attracted to participate in social work research 
• organizational cultures can affect data collection strategies 
• the value of independent research can be balanced with maintaining a good relationship with different stakeholders in the field where the research takes place  
• research results can be used to influence welfare policy and practice in social and child welfare services. 

Students are encouraged to evaluate critically the contribution of their own research project for the practice field and to reflect on making the results of their research relevant for policy makers. 

This course will be offered by NTNU in the third quarter of 2027 and 2029. The course will be held in Trondheim from 22 to 24 November 2027 in connection with the FORSA Conference.

Course Description

This doctoral course critically explores the theoretical, ethical, and practical dimensions of participatory research in welfare services. Understanding participation and involvement, especially in research involving children and youth, is crucial from the very beginning and presents diverse challenges. Ethically, researching vulnerable groups requires deep sensitivity to the field, participants’ life situations, and their upbringing environments. To address this, the course offers key insights into epistemological and methodological approaches to participation, power dynamics, and ethical challenges in research.

This course equips PhD candidates with the analytical and practical methods needed to navigate the realities of participation and co-creation across all stages of inquiry, with a particular focus on children and youth. Through a combination of lectures, interactive workshops, and peer discussions, candidates will critically engage with theories of participation, power dynamics, and collaborative methodologies. The goal is to enable candidates to balance academic or institutional demands with genuine collaborative values, preparing them to develop and conduct impactful, ethically reflexive, and co-created research.

Core Themes

· Epistemologies of Participation and Co-creation: Examining the theoretical and ethical foundations that underpin exploring participants’ lifeworld through collaboration and involving children, youth, and families.

· The Dynamics of Power: Critically analyzing asymmetry, positionality, and the democratization of knowledge when collaborating with service users, practitioners, and communities in welfare settings.

· Participatory Methods in Practice: Develop concrete strategies for conducting participatory research and analyze current research methods, while managing institutional and structural constraints in a doctoral project.

Course coordinator: Hilde Marie Thrana, NTNU

Study administrator: Ingvil Åfarli, NTNU

Utførlig kursbeskrivelse er tilgjengelig et halvt år før kurset arrangeres. Dette kurset blir tilbudt av UiT Norges arktiske universitet fjerdje kvartal 2023, 2025, 2027 og 2029.

Course contents:
This course explores innovation in social work and child welfare at a PhD level. The course covers both classic and more recent theories on innovation processes at a service, organizational and societal level. An introduction is given to welfare technology in a broad context, including various methodological approaches. The students’ own professional competence and practice is emphasized as a key factor for innovative interdisciplinary collaboration, and as an important contribution to promoting research and innovation that can contribute to solving future social challenges (locally, regionally, nationally and globally).

Learning outcomes:

Knowledge

The PhD candidate has

• knowledge on how to develop and make social work and the child welfare service´s innovation potential visible in the form of new concepts, theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.
• knowledge about theory and methods in the field related to innovation and welfare technology and can contribute to developing new work practices.

Skills

The PhD candidate is able to

• formulate issues, plan and carry out research, and handle professional development work in the field at a high international level.
• participate in professional discussions and provide constructive feedback in the field.

General competence

The PhD candidate may

• assess and identify new research questions in the field.
• manage complex interdisciplinary work tasks, practices and projects
• take part in debates in national and international fora.
• assess the need for, and initiate, innovation by contributing independently to complex and innovative projects

Her finner du kursbeskrivelse for vår 2026 og hvordan du søker

Utførlig kursbeskrivelse er tilgjengelig et halvt år før kurset arrangeres. Dette kurset blir tilbudt av UiT Norges arktiske universitet i fjerde kvartal 2022, tredje kvartal 2024, første kvartal 2026 og 2028, og andre kvartal 2030.

Credits: 5 SP

Grade: Third degree level (PhD)

Language: English or a Scandinavian language depending on the participants language proficiency.

Year of study: Autumn 2024

Course contents:

The choice of analytical strategy for the analysis of data is an important one in any qualitative research project. The course will provide an introduction to selected approaches for analysis of qualitative data. The focus is generating of data, analysis, and interpretation. Participants will be introduced to premises of and aims for a selected variation of qualitative analyses and learn how to assess the strengths and limitations of these approaches.  

Lectures will provide practical examples for data analysis, thus enable participants to make a choice for the analytical strategy they will apply to the analysis of research data.  

In addition to the lectures, participants are expected to discuss their data, interpretation of data, and analysis. 

Learning outcomes 

Knowledge 

The PhD candidate  

• has knowledge of selected approaches to qualitative analysis for handling empirical data 

Skills 

The PhD candidate  

• have the skills necessary for making choices among a variety of qualitative analytical strategies  
• can handle complex challenges related to qualitative analysis and present empirical data in a scientific and thorough manner 
• can perform qualitative analysis in studies on social work and child welfare, according to internationally recognized standards 

General competence 

The PhD candidate  

• has in-depth knowledge about a variety of approaches to qualitative analysis, the epistemological and methodological premises they build on, and the practical analytical steps that have to be conducted in each of these approaches  

This course will be offered by NTNU in the third quarter of 2022, 2024, 2026, and 2028.

The course will be held in Tromsø on 19–21 October 2026. You can view the programme here.

Course description at NTNU

Course content

During the 19th century, the core family of mother, father and children became the dominant family form in most societies. The transition from agricultural to industrial society can be described as a standardization of the roles within the family. Accordingly, upbringing of children was professionalized and the family became a target group for an emerging supervision and assistance system in the modern welfare states. Simultaneousely, the ‘standard model’ for the family came under pressure from a changing labor market, a transition from industrial society to knowledge society and from neoliberal deregulation of institutions in society.

In this complex interaction between an increasingly flexible and tenuose working life and looser family structures, welfare measures aimed at families are under pressure. The tendencies of polarization between families economically, socially and culturally increase inequalities in life chances between children and families. Such inequalities have implications for how families manage parenthood and bring up their children. Parenting in the neoliberal knowledge society is demanding. Through various measures of support, regulation and control provided by services such as health care, kindergarden, school and child welfare, parenthood is constructed both internally in the family and externally in relation to other adults and to central institutions in children’s lives. Tensions and contradictions exist between various actor’s perspectives. In these relationships, children, parents, welfare providers, the state and society negotiate normative values and ideals associated with notions of good childhood and good parenthood.

Learning outcome

Knowledge – the student shall:

• understand advanced theories on children, family and parenthood related to late modernity, neoliberalism, new social conservatism, governmentality and the interaction between family, state and market.
• critically apply relevant theoretical constructs to the rapid social changes occurring in nation state social, economic and institutional contexts
• evaluate the application of different methods and processes in research on the relationships between children and parents, parenthood and family development
• contribute to the development of new knowledge, new theories, methods and/or interpretations in the field of parenting and family life

Skills – the student shall demonstrate the ability to:

• formulate research questions, plan and conduct research on the relationships between children and parents, parenthood and family
• conduct research at a high international level
• critically analyse complex social and academic issues and challenge established knowledge and practice in the field
  

General competence – The student shall

• be able to identify a range of relevant ethical principles and issues and dilemmas in the relationship between family, market and welfare states in neoliberal societies and to engage in broader debates surrounding their research