Education (Early Childhood Studies) (Taught)

Why study this course?

This Education MA degree is designed to provide you with a broad range of knowledge and skills within the field of education and early childhood studies. It is a diverse course drawing on a range of topics and covers a range of disciplines. Throughout this course, you’ll have opportunities to develop and enhance your professional skills and understanding. You’ll also cover a diverse range of topics and disciplines, taught by experts in their field.

On this master's degree you’ll be introduced to key academic and professional debates within the field, helping you to develop your professional voice and standpoint. Upon successful completion of this degree, we hope that you will feel enthused about joining, continuing or returning to the education sector and feel intellectually empowered to initiate change.

A key theme embedded in this master’s degree is social justice. This course is aligned with our Education for Social Justice (ESJ) strategy to ensure equity in our curriculum practice.

More about this course

On this Education (Early Childhood Studies) MA you’ll explore educational early childhood practices, policies, theory, key themes and institutions in the UK and beyond in a multidisciplinary and critical context.

This course is designed to be flexible, making it ideal for those already working in education.

During your time on this master’s course, you’ll develop your knowledge in:

• research methods and practices where you’ll be required to design, undertake and report on a research project that has the potential to contribute to the wider scholarly and academic community

• theoretical debates to understand and interpret the contribution made by scholarship, research and researchers to the education field

• debates around improvement, progress and transformation that have informed innovation and shaped policy changes for a generation and be able to explore these critically

• guided independent study in your chosen area

Example modules include-
Critical Theory and Education
Critical discourses in Early Childhood
Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment
Education Dissertation
Identity and Self in the Early Years
Research Methods in Education
Curriculum Leadership
Social Justice Education

All assessment is carried out through coursework. In most cases this takes the form of either one essay of between of around 4-5000 words, or two shorter assessments, to enable assessments to build on each other and provide feed-forward opportunities for the final assessment.

The Research Methods in Education module requires the students to submit a research proposal of around 4,000 words. This research plan will form the starting point for the dissertation module the following semester.

To complete this Master’s degree, you’ll be required to carry out a small-scale research project focusing on an area of interest and relevance to yourself. This research project will have to be written up in the form of an academic dissertation of around 15,000 words.

The first part of the dissertation module will comprise of taught sessions to support the research and writing process of the various sections of the dissertation. Later in the semester, students will then move to having individual or small group supervision meetings with a dissertation supervisor as they make their way through the writing process.