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Undergraduate

Education is a powerful tool for social change.

This degree goes beyond the classroom, exploring how education can challenge inequalities, empower communities, and drive social change. You'll dive into both formal and informal education, uncovering its transformative potential to create a fairer, more just society.

Learning is hands-on and immersive. From practice placements and field trips to study visits and project-based learning, you’ll gain real-world experience that brings your studies to life. With a flexible mix of optional and compulsory modules, you can shape your degree around your passions, giving you the freedom to explore what excites you most. Plus, with opportunities to study or work abroad, you’ll expand your global perspective and build an impressive foundation for a career in education, community work, and beyond.

About this course

Gain the skills you need for the complex and ever-evolving educational landscape.

This degree explores education’s role in shaping society, focusing on inclusion, social justice, and lifelong learning. You’ll examine formal and informal education within cultural, societal, and political contexts, gaining insight into the impact of power, inequality, and alternative approaches to education.

Hands-on experience is at the heart of this course. You’ll take part in fieldwork, project-based learning, and professional placements in each year of study, with opportunities to work in schools, community settings, and alternative education environments. You can also study abroad for a semester or complete an international placement in your second year.

Your studies will cover a range of engaging topics, including education’s potential to drive social change, ethical dilemmas, and equality, diversity, and inclusion. Optional modules allow you to specialise in areas such as neurodiversity, youth work, special educational needs, or English language teaching. You’ll also have the chance to gain an accredited Forest School certification, equipping you to work outdoors with children while considering diverse learning needs.

By connecting theory with real-world practice, this degree prepares you for a range of careers in education, community work, policy, and beyond.

By teaching, we learn

Module options

Each year, you’ll study modules worth a certain number of credits, and you need 120 credits per year. Most modules are 20 credits – so you’ll study six modules each year. Some longer modules, such as a dissertation, are worth more. In these cases, you’ll study fewer modules - but the number of credits will always add up to 120. Some modules are compulsory, some are optional, so you can build a course that’s right for you.

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Filters

  • Education, Power and Knowledge

    Education is at the forefront of social change for social justice.  This module offers you the opportunity to make a difference, through Education, from the beginning of your studies.  As agents of educational change, you will undertake a collaborative project which focuses on the issues you are passionate about alongside fellow students and academics. You will examine how mainstream education has been shaped through agendas of power that reproduce social inequalities.  This module then introduces you to existing alternative approaches to education and to the direct action of educators and learners which come from those approaches. Alternative approaches to education can act as driver of change to challenge poverty, inequality, and sustainable community development at local, national, and global contexts.

    compulsory

    20 credits

  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

    This engaging module provides foundation knowledge and skills that will enable you to develop understanding and analysis of social inequalities and the nature of discrimination in contemporary society. There will be opportunities to explore key equality legislation and policy. The module will explore the ethical and political rationale for developing equitable, diverse, and inclusive practices as part of an agenda for social justice and social change.

    compulsory

    20 credits

  • Learning Across the Lifespan

    This module explores a diverse range of theories of human development and learning. Using real world examples, you will be encouraged to apply a combination of theories to understand, consider and reflect upon appropriate courses of action to address issues found across a range: of relevant settings and contexts.

    compulsory

    20 credits

  • Ethical Dilemmas and the Moral Maze

    Dealing with real-world, ethical, or moral dilemmas is both challenging and pertinent to all areas of lived experience and professional, practice.  The module will introduce you to a range of theoretical models and provide opportunities to explore these in relation to real world ethical dilemmas drawn from professional practice contexts.  

    compulsory

    20 credits

  • Social Justice and Social Change

    Social Justice and Social Change offers an exciting opportunity for you to make a difference from the outset of your studies. You will work collaboratively to co-produce the big social justice questions.  Why are so many children still living in poverty in the UK? Why does inequality still exist?  Why do so many young people leave school without being able to read and write?  What will good work look like in 2030. How is social media affecting ideas about education? What is your vision for the type of society you want to live in?  With these big questions in mind, you will become familiar with innovative, creative projects and initiatives that work with children, young people, and communities, locally, regionally, nationally and globally.  The module provides field work visits and placement alongside teaching and learning.

    compulsory

    40 credits

  • Managing Self in Contemporary Practice Contexts

    This module will provide opportunities to understand how organisations work in contemporary society and will consider different approaches to leadership. The module will encourage you to explore your own approach to leading and managing in the 21st century and introduce you to a range of graduate futures across all organisation types including for example schools, charities, health services or your own enterprise business. The module will encourage you to think about leadership in new ways as well as understanding the challenges facing organisations in developing ethical and socially just practices and services. You will acquire a range of skills and develop your knowledge to help you make a difference through activities such as knowing where to source funding and write a funding bid to evidence good practice.

    compulsory

    20 credits

  • Professional Practice Placement

    You will have the opportunity to make a difference to the lives of people and communities through an extended placement within your chosen field, either in the UK or abroad. The placement will support you to become increasingly confident, and able to drive your own professional development. We have exciting placement opportunities in various informal and formal contexts that will introduce you to the transformatory potential of education.

    compulsory

    40 credits

  • Communities of Practice

    This is a participatory, experiential, and collaborative module in which you will be introduced to a series of provocations identified by practitioners working at a grass root level in range of informal and formal educational contexts settings. The module works alongside the professional practice placement and will enable you to undertake in depth investigation into issues you are encountering in practice.

    compulsory

    20 credits

  • Introduction to English Language Teaching

    This module looks at how language is governed by the context in which it occurs, and how far this affects the way that it is learned. You will seek to answer the following core questions:

    Why are there so many different ways of saying the same thing?

    How can we best describe language use?

    What is the connection between language use and language learning?

    optional

    20 credits

Our facilities

Study the theory in our lecture rooms – before you put your learning into practice in the classroom.

Our academics

You'll benefit from the outstanding support of academic staff who are experienced education practitioners.

Our research is driven by the belief that education can challenge inequalities and injustices in society, and seeks social and educational change to enhance fairness, equity and social justice.

Gill Hughes

Dr Gill Hughes

Senior Lecturer

Tim Rudd

Tim Rudd

Lecturer

Entry Requirements

Fees & Funding

How much is it?

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Future prospects

Graduates of this course move into impactful roles such as Education Welfare Officer, Pastoral Care Officer, Employability Tutor, and Training Consultant. Others take on positions like Social Action Leader, Project Coordinator, and Statutory Advocate, making a real difference in communities and educational settings.

The course also provides a strong foundation for postgraduate study, for example our MA Social Justice and Community Engagement or MA SENDI degrees, opening doors to advanced roles in education and beyond. You could also go on to further study with this recognised route to PGCE.

Become part of the next generation of futuremakers

Like what you've seen? Then it's time to apply.

The standard way is to apply through UCAS. This will give you the chance to showcase your skills qualities and passion for the subject, as well as providing us with your academic qualifications.

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Not ready to apply yet?

Visit our next Open Day, and see all that Hull has to offer for yourself. Talk to our lecturers about your subject, find out what university is really like from our current students, and take a tour of our beautiful campus and amazing facilities.

You may also be interested in...

1.

94.9% employability (Education Studies) UK domicile full-time first degree leavers; Higher Education Graduate Outcomes statistics, for the academic year 2021/22, published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency June 2024.

2.

1st in the UK for teaching on my course National Student Survey (NSS) 2024, HEIs only.

All modules on this course page are subject to availability and this list may change at any time.