A European Framework for Psychologists' Training

CURRICULUM CONTENT - DENMARK

The aim of the Bachelor degree and the Candidate degree is to give students a generic education. The law regulates this. Specialization in specific areas of work follows after the Master's thesis. This is also a demand on the education from the Royal School of Education. This is not changeable because it is a general rule going back to the 1980s where Denmark suffered from a large structural unemployment. By structural unemployment we mean that psychologists could not get jobs in private industry due to their specialization in clinical psychology etc. The government therefore insisted on generic education within all areas including law and medicine.

The main area covered, and the time spent on each course can be seen in the appendix. The scope of coverage, however, differs markedly by university. In general the Danish education has a rather low coverage of practical research methods, and theoretical and methodological aspects a very strong position. Both the University of Copenhagen and Aarhus are trying to change this, while Aalborg is returning to the old tradition, which can also be seen in the appendix. Further, the coverage of personality, social, and cognitive psychology is very different from University to University. For instance social psychology in Copenhagen consists of both a sociological and psychological line. Aarhus, however, prioritises personality psychology, as can be seen in the curriculum.

Again it should be noticed that in the present situation the Ministry of Education encourages this situation, in the hope that the competition between the Universities will be greater.

Framework | Project | Partners | National Information | Presentations | Articles