Education Studies

Preparing for Learning in Higher Education

This module is designed to give you the best possible start to your university studies, making sure you have all the essential skills you need to succeed. Through lectures and workshops we will teach you how to write in an academic style, how to find quality sources, how to reference work, culminating in writing up a mini-research project.

Introduction to Education

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.

Research in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Education

This module will equip you with the necessary skills to conduct and analyse research in a specific interest, supported by academics within your subject. You'll navigate through the research process, from identifying an area of interest to presenting their findings to your peers.

Group Challenge (Humanities)

Formulate and execute a group led enquiry into texts, cultural artifacts, film, music or dance. You'll explore their topics in groups at supervised workshops and develop questions on the cultural object relates to the living world of human experience, as well as developing your own methods to answer these questions.

Foundation in Data Analysis

Develop a strong foundation in data collection and analysis. This module will introduce you to qualitative and quantitative data and how to analyse it; the collection of primary and secondary data; the production of high quality graphics; and report writing.

Academic Writing Skills

Developing confidence in expression, oral as well as written, is a key feature of this module, which also aims to familiarise you with submission and assessment procedures in the context of Higher Education. This is a clear building block onto your degree programme and places you at a distinct advantage when you move into the following year.

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.

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.  

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? 

Issues and Interventions in Youth and Community Work

This module provides a sound basis for understanding key issues such as mental health, child criminal exploitation, youth offending, victimisation and the interventions and practices which seek to address these. Working in small project teams you will have the opportunity to identify and explore issues through real world case studies and practitioner experiences from which you can apply relevant theory and policy. During the module you will develop your understanding of the youth and community justice system, health services/projects and the role of Youth and Community Work within both health intervention and justice services.   

Creatively and Critically Exploring Neurodiversity

This module utilises a novel and innovative approach to collaborative inquiry.  Working with the concepts of difference and affect students will be encouraged to develop asset based analysis that draws on first person accounts of neurodivergent people becoming the authors of their own stories, influencing and shaping approaches to policy, research and practice,  Students will be encouraged to develop their own critical literacy skills and build their own conceptual tool box in relation to neurodiversity that they can develop alongside children, young people, communities with whom they may engage with in the future.

Working Therapeutically and Inclusively with Children with SEND

This exciting module enables you to consider how you might work more effectively and inclusively with children and young people who have special educational needs. You will be able to develop hands-on, practical experience with therapeutic skills such as play therapy, life story work and Lego therapy. In addition, you will become familiar with a variety of additional needs, such as Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD), Tourette’s Syndrome, and emotional and behavioural difficulties including adverse childhood trauma.

Voice and Influence

This dynamic module will extend your knowledge and understanding of the role and purpose of voice and influence in your practice with children, young people, families, adults and communities. It is crucial that people have a voice and the opportunity to influence decisions that affect them and the matters that are of importance to them. The module will examine models of voice and influence from forums and campaigns to the role of the media. It will also explore issues of advocacy and   ways to support children, young people, adults and communities in representing their views, needs and wishes to decision makers.

Extended Research Project

This module builds on your learning and development throughout the three years of your degree and offers an exciting opportunity to delve deeply into and explore a contemporary issue which you feel passionate about that is relevant to your programme of study. You will have the opportunity to design, develop and conduct your own research project. Through the process of this research and writing up your extended research project you will develop specialist knowledge and skills relevant to your graduate future, whether that be employment or postgraduate study. 

Key Contemporary Themes in Education

This module gives you an ideal opportunity to pursue a final practice placement alongside subjects that you are interested and passionate about. It is an opportunity to discuss and draw together themes that you have encountered during your degree. As such it enables you to make full use of the skills and knowledge you have developed over the three years. Issues that you have described in year 1 (Social Justice) and analysed in year 2 (collaborative action learning) will become the focus of a principled response applying the insights you have gained from exposure to a range of contexts from across the field of SENDI within this key contemporary themes' module.