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.

Ethical Dilemmas and the Moral Maze

Dealing with real-world, ethical or moral dilemmas is extremely challenging, yet pertinent to all areas of work and professional practice, with the skills and insight to deal with these situations therefore being of the utmost importance and benefit in the contemporary world. Such issues can be extremely complex and commonplace, affecting individuals and communities in a range of different contexts -impacting upon both children, young people and adults. Planning and working collaboratively to explore these dilemmas, you will analyse a range of case studies (ethical dilemmas) relevant to your areas of interest, seeking to explore the legal, moral and ethical requirements of practice.

Learning Across the Lifespan

This module explores a diverse range of theories of human development and learning. Using real world examples provided, 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.

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. But this module then introduces you to existing alternate approaches to education, and to the direct action of educators and learners which come from those approaches. Alternate approaches to education can act as drivers of change to challenge poverty, inequality and sustainable community development at local, national and global 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'll 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? Does democracy really 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? With these big questions in mind, you'll become familiar with innovative and creative projects and initiatives that work with children, young people and communities.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

This engaging module provides foundation knowledge and skills that will enable you to understand the background and needs of a diverse range of children, young people and communities you will encounter in a range of practice contexts, and throughout your career. It provides theoretical knowledge and understanding of policy, legislation and research, which will underpin your academic and/or professional identity.

Leadership and Project Management

Your degree will open up opportunities for a range of graduate futures across all organisation types for example in schools, charities, health services or your own enterprise business. This module will provide opportunities to understand how organisations work and the styles of leadership within these. For example do you consider yourself to be ‘democratic’ or ‘authoritarian’, are leaders born or made? This module will challenge you to think about leadership in new ways and understand the challenges facing organisations. 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 evidencing good practice.

Professional Practice

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. Through the placement, you will become increasingly confident, competent and drive your own professional development. We have exciting placement opportunities in various contexts that will introduce you to a range of innovative ways you can work with and alongside organisations, practitioners, children, young people and families which have real impact in their lives.

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 a range of early years, family, youth and community, SENDI, TESOL, and educational settings.

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.

Participation, Engagement and Applied Professional Ethics with Young People and Communities

This module will provide you with the opportunity to develop essential knowledge of the important profession of Youth and Community Work which will enhance your ability to excel in your chosen field of work. As Youth and Community Workers you will draw on an appreciative view of young people and communities, recognising and valuing what is strong and not wrong to challenge the dominant deficit discourse that portrays young people as deviant and communities as lacking. This module supports you to examine innovative and creative ways to make a difference in society.

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 understand these 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.

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 are 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?

Language and Communication in Context

This module aims to heighten students’ language awareness, particularly from the perspective of the emerging language teacher, whilst enabling students to develop an understanding of the relationship between language form, function and meaning and show how these are dependent on genre and context. You will explore how the nature of language use has profound implications for how it should be taught. This feeds onto the second major element of the module; Language Learning. Here you will examine how languages are learned, why some learners are more successful than others and what research can tell us about how best to go about teaching them.

Representations and Realities: The Media, Diversity and Difference

This module utilises a novel and innovative approach to examining the issues and barriers faced by potentially marginalised groups within the context of the media. You will examine how stereotypical, and often stigmatising, representations of different social groups are perceived and then permeate key areas of society including education. It will equip you with important tools required to analyse the media, which will enhance your own critical literacy skills. These new skills may then be used to develop the same skills in the children, young people and communities you will engage with in the future.

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 offers an exciting opportunity for you 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 your dissertation 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 subjects you are interested in and passionate about with the chance to bring together and discuss themes that you have encountered during the programme. 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 arrange of contexts from across the field within this Key Contemporary Themes module.

(Note, this module is not available on the YCW Pathway.)

Further Principles and Practice of English Language Teaching

This module gives you the chance to learn about the diverse and dynamic field of English Language teaching, with the development of key skills and insight relevant to a range of English language teaching and educational-related employment and further study. In conjunction with the (TESOL pathway) Level 5 ‘Introduction to English language teaching’ module, these combined modules importantly provide you with the opportunity to additionally achieve the Trinity Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages–an internationally recognised professional English language teaching qualification.

Childhood and the Digital World

You will develop a critical understanding of the way in which digital technologies and social media have become integral to the lives of children and young people, providing new opportunities but also challenges. Drawing on cutting-edge research and contemporary theoretical perspectives, you will analyse a number of evidence-based facts related to how young people’s physical, social and cognitive development and wellbeing, can be influenced by a number of factors related to the use of digital technology.

Professional Practice Placement

In this module you will have an opportunity to design, implement and evaluate a strategy for your own Youth and Community Work practice that makes a contribution to making a difference in the lives of young people and/or communities. We have exciting placement opportunities in various contexts that will open up spaces for you to develop effective practice.