DPhil in Education

University of Oxford

About the course

The DPhil in Education is intended to provide graduates with a wide range of research skills, as well as in-depth knowledge, understanding and expertise in their chosen field of research.

There are full-time and part-time routes available. Currently the overall expected contact time for the part-time route is thirty days at Oxford per year, but the majority of this will take place across the three eight week terms, and will include supervision meetings and core research training. In the first year, part-time students will normally be expected to be in department every Thursday during term time. In later years there is greater flexibility and contact time will be agreed between the student and their supervisor.

The department's doctoral students develop their skills through a range of research methods and skills training courses in their first year. At the heart of the skills provision is the Research Training Seminar, where students present and develop their research ideas and proposals with the benefit of feedback and support from their peers.

You will work closely with supervisors on literature review and study design for the thesis, and you are encouraged to make the most of the doctoral training and research methods provision available across the Social Sciences Division.

Assessment

There are two interim assessments in the DPhil. the Transfer of Status assessment which is on a 10,000 word research proposal, typically towards the end of the first year; and the Confirmation of Status assessment which comes 6-9 months before final submission and is composed of two chapters from your thesis (methodology and a findings chapter) and a framing document. Each of these assessments incorporate an interview with two assessors which prepares you for your final viva. The final submission is of a thesis of between 80,000 and 100,000 words, which is examined via a viva voce examination with one internal and one external examiner.

Graduate destinations

The most recent Oxford University Destination of Leavers from Higher Education Survey made contact with 635 master's course students who graduated from the Department of Education between 2012 and 2014. Fully 90.2% of alumni were in work and 5.8% in further study with only 2.0% looking for work, ranking the department in the best 3 of the 20 departments in Oxford's Social Sciences Division.

Past DPhil students from the Department of Education have gone on to academic and research careers at universities in the UK (eg Oxford, Edinburgh, Warwick, UCL, King's College, St. Mary's, Liverpool) and across the world (eg Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Hong Kong, Chile), or are employed across a wide range of other sectors such as policy for government departments or NGOs, international organisations such as OECD, think tanks and administration at local and national levels. The department’s ‘Conversations with Alumni’ feature includes interviews with two DPhil alumni on their career paths after Oxford.