On December 7, 2023, a preliminary defense of diploma theses for the second (master’s) level of higher education was held with the participation of higher education applicants – second-year students of the specialty 014 Secondary Education (History) of the Master’s program (full-time and part-time study) – and teachers of three departments: the Department of History of Ukraine and Methods of Teaching History, the Department of History of Central and Eastern Europe and Special Branches of Historical Science, and the Department of World History. In his opening remarks, the Head of the Department of History of Ukraine and Methods of Teaching History, the Chairman of the Examination Commission, Prof. I.Ya. Raykivskyi, emphasized that for the proper preparation of this type of qualification work, one should follow the methodological recommendations for writing and defending a diploma thesis for the second (master’s) level of higher education, approved at the meeting of the Scientific and Methodological Council of the Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University on June 27, 2018 and methodological guidelines prepared by teachers of the Department of History of Ukraine and History Teaching Methods.
After that, Associate Professor of the Department of History of Ukraine and Methods of Teaching History T.V. Halytska-Didukh spoke, who emphasized that a mandatory element of the structure of the main part of the diploma thesis for obtaining the second (master’s) level of higher education in the specialty 014 Secondary Education (History) is a section (usually the last one) dedicated to the methodological use of the topic of the thesis research in general secondary education institutions (except for cases when the entire work is of a “pedagogical” nature). Such a section implements not only special subject knowledge in history, but also modern knowledge in pedagogy and psychology, teaching and upbringing methods.
In the second part of the meeting, the preliminary defense of diploma theses for the second (master’s) level of higher education began. The head of the Department of History of Ukraine and Methods of Teaching History, Prof. I.Ya. Raykivsky, who chaired the meeting, gave the floor to students, who informed about the relevance of their chosen research topics and the state of readiness for the defense of qualification works. After each student’s speech, the scientific supervisors of these works – teachers of the Department of History of Ukraine and Methods of Teaching History, the Department of History of Central and Eastern Europe and Special Branches of Historical Science, and the Department of World History – expressed their thoughts, presenting the strengths and weaknesses of the works. As a result, student diploma theses for the second (master’s) level of higher education were recommended for defense. The leading specialist of the Institute of History, Ethnology and Archaeology of the Carpathians, Bohdan Paska, acted as the scientific supervisor of 4 master’s theses.