What does education really look like beyond your own school experience? This module opens new perspectives on how education works, with a particular focus on secondary schools.

Starting with your own experiences, you’ll explore what education means, how it differs from schooling, and how its purpose has evolved over time. You’ll examine how education is shaped locally, nationally, and globally- through the English National Curriculum and a range of alternative approaches, including SEND provision, Montessori, and other progressive models.

With regular school visits, you’ll see secondary education in action, exploring how teachers plan, support diverse learners, and respond to issues such as inclusion, safeguarding, and sustainability. You’ll also consider education from different viewpoints - including students, teachers, families, and wider society.

Broaden your perspective, build your academic skills, and take your first step towards a career in secondary education.

This module explores the “Big Questions” in Education, drawing on key thinkers and theorists from across many periods of history and diverse locations across the globe. It will prepare you for undertaking your own research later in the degree, and provide broad horizons to challenge some of your preconceptions and expectations about education.

What if you could gain real classroom experience while developing the skills to become a reflective educator? This module gives you the opportunity to take part in an extended paid or voluntary work placement and bring your learning to life.

Whether you choose a local school, an alternative setting, or even an international experience, you’ll immerse yourself in environments that support children’s learning and development. Along the way, you’ll observe teaching in action and explore how theory, policy, and pedagogy shape real educational practice.

A key focus of the module is reflection. You’ll learn how to use professional reflective models to critically evaluate your experiences, developing the mindset and skills needed to grow as a thoughtful, adaptable practitioner.

Gain valuable experience, think like a professional, and take a confident step towards your future in teaching.

Following focused input from your lecturers, this module provides the opportunity to explore a particular topic of interest to you, supported by a tutor. Whether you want to learn more about child development, pedagogy, approaches to behavior management or an aspect of the school curriculum, you will be supported to develop critical insights into real life practice.

Start to think like a computer. This module explores logic, data storage and algorithms with the use of practical demonstrations and activities. Operating in parallel with programming-focused modules, we will develop a toolkit of key concepts from a theoretical (non-code) perspective, facilitating a better understanding of these fundamentals. Topics to expect include pseudocode, state machines, essential keywords, common data structures, sort algorithms and search algorithms. You will learn methods to analyse and compare algorithms and their constituent parts in order that you may better design, evaluate and develop effective, efficient and performant software solutions.

This module, Computational Thinking, is essential for developing computer-based solutions. This module will enable you to develop your knowledge and understanding of the key mathematical underpinnings of computer science, to aid you in problem solving and programming. The development of your competence in logic, mathematics and statistics will also provide evidence of your numeracy and more advanced skills and is valued by employers.

Gain the practical knowledge to design, implement and test algorithms. The module uses lectures to deliver concepts, a practice lab to apply the programming concepts learnt by developing programs to solve problems. You will take part in hands-on practical assessments, which will enable you to acquire extensive programming skills in an industry standard programming language. We will support you whether you are new to programming or have existing skills.

In this module you will hone your skills in reflective practice, reflecting on contributions from a variety of speakers and experts in addition to visits to a range of learning settings for children of different ages. This will include both formal and informal learning settings.

Education systems and processes are continually changing: nothing ever seems to stand still! This module will support you to explore current issues and to develop your viewpoint and deepen your understanding drawing on the practical and theoretical learning you have gained in earlier modules.