Theory or practice: what to expect from the professional master's thesis in administration?

Abstract

Strict sense mastership courses in Brazil can be academic or professional, being the latter ones representative of a type focused on the training of professionals. Previous recent articles sought to evaluate the importance of this modality in comparison with academic courses; however, they have not advanced in the discussion on the term papers of professional mastership courses. For this, a guideline was developed, supported by experiential learning theory, applied to students entering the professional master's degree, between 2014 and 2015, from School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo FEA-USP. The current research, motivated by the perceived need to have a different logic for the preparation of the term paper at professional masters, sought to investigate whether students in their projects are using this guideline. The research took place in two distinct phases: the first aimed to develop the guidelines to be tested and in the second was carried out a documentary research with 37 students’ projects, being these documents analyzed using content analysis. We concluded that the guideline was partially used by students, lacking evolution when concerning the inclusion of creativity, the observation of experiences and the relationship between theory and practice.