Theses (Bachelor and Master) at the Department of Early Childhood Education

We are happy to supervise final theses of students from the subject area of early childhood education. Preference will be given to requests from students for supervision of theses with past or current participation in a course taught by members of the department.

Procedure

Please contact the desired person in our department via email in a timely and exclusive manner if you wish to be supervised. Please refrain from sending group emails to the entire department. In your initial email, your idea, previous considerations, or possibly the topic of your thesis should be apparent. We will contact you accordingly.

Registration of your thesis with the examination office is only possible after submission of an exposé and consultation with the future supervisor, that is, after the binding agreement of supervision by us.

Information

Exposé:

The confirmation of supervision for your thesis will be given after we have reviewed and discussed your exposé together. You can find information on how to create an exposé here. Generally, an exposé is an extremely useful tool to structure your work process for creating your thesis.

Supervision scope/intensity:

At the beginning, we will have a meeting to talk in detail about the structure and content of the thesis. The basis of the conversation is your exposé. After this meeting, you will independently work on the thesis. If questions arise, you can contact the supervisor. We refrain from reviewing the thesis before submission for reasons of equal opportunities for other students. The thesis represents your own work.

The level of supervision depends on the needs of the student while adhering to the principle of independence. As a guideline, there are around three meetings within the supervision of bachelor's theses. For master's theses, individual arrangements are made.

Weekly meetings are avoided.

Journals and search engines.

Suitable journals and search engines for literature research for scientific papers can be found here.

Formal guidelines and citation:

Please submit your thesis in 1.5 line spacing, justified text with hyphenation and 12 point font size. The word count is based on the examination regulations of the respective degree, i.e., approximately 7,500 words for Bachelor's theses and up to 24,000 words for Master's theses.

In your thesis, please always cite according to the latest version of the American Psychology Association (APA).

Evaluation criteria:

General aspects of the presentation:

• Structure and outline
• Clarity and comprehensibility
• Correctness of the appearance
• Quality of explanations and illustrative examples
• Correctness and completeness of the bibliography

Specification: Theoretical paper

• Outline
• Precision
• Extent of literature considered
• Appropriateness of the selection of literature
• Integration of the approaches presented
• Evaluation of the approaches in the context of theoretical positions
• Independence in the selection of the topic and literature research

Specification: Empirical paper

• Introduction into the research question
• Conversion of the theoretical into the empirical research question (operationalization)
• Adequacy of the research plan
• Documentation of the data collection process
• Appropriateness and correctness of the analysis
• Evaluation of the results with regard to the research questions/hypotheses
• Independence in planning and evaluation

General evaluation dimensions:

• Problem understanding
• Critical reflection of the work

PLAGIARISM:

Before writing papers, please read the plagiarism guidelines for the degree programs.

Registration of the thesis:

The responsible registration office of the Bachelor's and Master's program will inform you about the necessary registration formalities for your thesis.