This module sets the scene for the programme, starting with your own background and experience and exploring what education means, how it differs from schooling and key concepts and approaches. It will also help you to develop the academic skills necessary for your degree programme.

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.

This module provides opportunity to engage in an extended period of work experience (paid or voluntary) and reflect on the learning environment in which you are based. Whether in a location local to home, or visiting a more distant place, there is flexibility to explore your interests as well as deepening your understanding of learning and children’s development to prepare you for applying for a teacher-training course.

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.

What does it mean to be free and how has the answer to this question changed over time? In ancient and medieval times, there was no expectation of individual freedom as we understand it today, rather there were degrees of ‘unfreedom’ such as slavery, serfdom, or vassalage. Later, in the age of empire, race determined who could be enslaved, and the slave trade’s legacies of racism persist into the present day: the civil rights movements and the struggle against apartheid are known as some of the most prominent recent fights for freedom. Nonetheless, the idea of freedom has far broader connotations, and you will also have the flexibility to explore diverse issues such as religious, cultural or personal freedoms.

What are the historical roots of what is happening now? You will help to shape the course by identifying some of the most pressing and interesting issues of the world today. We will then work together to research different perspectives on these themes by finding out historical background and historical parallels that help to explain them. The decision as to what we should explore together lies in your hands.

Why are TV programmes so obsessed with certain episodes in British history such as the Tudors and the world wars? What idea of Britain is conveyed when we focus on a narrow range of stories like Boudicca’s fight against Rome, victory at Agincourt, Henry VIII’s wives or the Battle of Britain? What gets left out of British history in these simplified versions of the past? This module will invite you to critique popular culture, such as television documentaries or computer games, and to create different fresh ideas for how you think the public could engage with an aspect of the past that inspires you.

How have humans shaped their environment, and how has the environment shaped them in return? These questions have controlled how and where we live. The availability of resources has encouraged migration and movement from the trade routes of the Silk Road across Asia to the imperial web of coaling stations that developed for the projection of naval power. How do cities grow – like St Petersburg, Delhi or Paris, built and rebuilt that has affected how generations of inhabitants later would live their lives?

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.