Individuals In Society (Education)

This is the first of two subject studies units that enables you to develop your underpinning knowledge and understanding for the courses that you will be studying when you enter your degree.

You will be studying aspects of sociology and thinking about how the underpinning theory relates firstly to you and the society in which you live and then to the subject area that you will be focussing on during your degree. The starting point will be you as an individual and relating your personal experiences, values and beliefs to sociological theory.

This serves the combined purposes of developing knowledge and understanding that will form a foundation for your degree studies; developing the ability to apply theory to real world examples and becoming familiar with some of the issues, skills and techniques that you will meet in your degree studies.
For this unit you will study a common core relating to sociology in a broader context and then apply that to sport and education or business as appropriate. You will complete work throughout the units which you have the flexibility to tailor to your subject interests

Throughout the course, you are encouraged to make links between units, and to apply, where appropriate, what you have learnt in one unit to the tasks and discussions set in others. In particular, you are encouraged to apply what you learn in this and the other subject-specific unit to the general studies units.

Contemporary Society In A Global World (Education)

This is the second subject studies unit that builds on the knowledge and understanding that you gained in semester one in relation to sociology and social structures and broadens the perspective to the subjects of diversity, inequality, health and well-being. As with your semester 1 unit, you will gain knowledge and understanding of the core subject and related theory and then apply that to a range of topics, issues and examples from your chosen subject area.
In semester 1 the focus was mainly on local and national contexts, this unit broadens the perspective to look at the broader, global context.

Examining Research (Education)

This unit applies subject knowledge and critical thinking that you have developed through your other units of the Foundation Year and gives you the experience opportunity to think about how:

• information about education and sport is developed through research;
• how different people in your subject area may use a diverse range of methodologies and methods to go about the research process.

You will examine some research that has been done in relation to a subject that you will be studying on your degree. This is your chance to unpick what the researchers have done and assess its strengths and weaknesses

As this is an introduction before you get the opportunity to study research design and methods in more depth, the aim is to give you the opportunity to look at a variety of examples and to develop an informed understanding of different approaches. There are also opportunities to examine and evaluate how many people encounter ‘information and knowledge’ though non-academic sources such as the media and the internet.

Studying For He (Education)

In this unit you will be introduced to what academic study in Higher Education is all about, both generally and related to studying specific subjects. You will be given opportunities to develop the skills, attitudes, confidence and strategies to help you succeed in the course and thus to meet the entry requirements for university study.
You will be supported in identifying where you have scope to develop skills and abilities and in planning for your on-going personal development and what works best for you. The module has a series of short core and option blocks of learning activity and tutors will guide you towards the options best suited for the subject area you are hoping to study in your degree and your own experience.
As you go through the year you will notice that you will be able to link the learning that you do in this module with other parts of the course and apply the learning to the assessments you will be doing.

Narratives Of Childhood

This unit examines children’s lives and education through historical, sociological and philosophical perspectives. It explores the ways in which children and young people’s social and learning worlds are experienced by them and constructed, surveyed and regulated by adults. It draws on different theoretical perspectives to investigate notions of childhood and interrogate the subjective realities of children’s lives and learning across the different spaces and places of family, community and school. It explores how social, economic, technological and cultural change, alongside difference and diversity shape various narratives around contemporary childhood experience and raise critical questions for policy and practice about children’s care, welfare and education.

The unit is relevant to students who intend to work with children, young people and families. It provides a broad understanding of the theories underpinning the studies of childhood and youth and education that is relevant to professional practice across family, school and community contexts. 

The Inclusive Society

This unit aims to help you in analysing social policy in the context of contemporary UK welfare reform. This will enable you to understand some key underpinning ideas in relation to education and inclusion in the UK.

Early Child Psychology

To gain an understanding of:

Basic psychological constructs in relation to early child development.  How these constructs impact on our learning within an educational context and settings, as well as how they are utilised within settings.

This unit will explore questions such as:

1. What is developmental psychology?

2. What changes in development occur during early childhood?

3. How does early child development impact on learning / early school experiences?

Approaching Literature

How do we read texts and which approaches can we use to develop our understanding of texts? 

Focusing on close reading of selected texts and introducing students to a range of literary genres, including poetry, drama and fiction, students will be introduced to a range of theoretical approaches which will provide a good foundation for study at levels 5 and 6.

How Talk Works

Talk plays a pivotal role in every person's daily life and affects us in countless ways, whether we are in social, professional, academic and personal contexts. Yet, the rules of conversation are seldom even mentioned, let alone the focus of study. Ironically, how we interact with others significantly affects outcomes.   

This unit therefore looks at conversation as a phenomenon, its structure, patterns, and norms, and how all of these can vary from speaker to speaker, and also from situation to situation.  

Speech can be studied easily thanks to technology: digital audio, video and online recordings of speakers and speech events provide insights that have to be reconciled with assumptions and beliefs about language use. 

The observational and descriptive skills associated with the study of talk foster an evidence-based approach to conversation analysis, and this increases our sensitivity to cultural norms and expectations, all of which will be relevant to a range of situations far beyond the classroom.

How Texts Work

The written word is all around us, on paper, online and in text messages.  All texts are produced in context, with a particular purpose and, usually, for a given audience, all of which influences the structure and content - factors that were first recognised in classical times, but are as pertinent in the 21st C as they were for Aristotle.  

The primary aim of the unit is to explore the different ways in which written texts are constructed and achieve their purposes and meanings.  Over the course of the unit, theoretical perspectives will be outlined and then directly applied to practical analyses of a range of texts. The insights developed into how texts work will prove to be an asset in any future career where the production and interpretation of written language is of importance.

Comparative Education

The unit provides an overview of comparative and international educationthrough an examination of the trends and problems affecting schooling in a variety of different countries in the context of global socio-political and economic change. It considers the ways in which education policy and practice is embedded in specific social, historical, economic and cultural contexts and offers opportunities for understanding and reflecting about yourown education and the processes and outcomes of education in other societies

Deschooling

The fundamental aim of this unit is to seek to develop students’ understanding of what it means to ‘educate’ and to ‘be educated’. This unit aims to discuss the notions of ‘schooling’ and ‘deschooling’, helping students examine the aims of ‘deschooling’ with a view to critically evaluating current accepted norms in educational establishments and pedagogy.

Developing a critical eye for these accepted norms will enable students to become critical and reflective practitioners in their future careers.

Developing Teaching Practice

This unit looks at how recent research and developments in teaching help practising teachers deliver effective classroom sessions. It will be of particular relevance if you are considering a career in teaching at any level. It seeks to answer the following questions: What is the conceptual and practical basis of current educational practice? How do teachers create an effective classroom framework?

Families And Communities

Using a sociological perspective, this unit explores the family, community and culture in contemporary British society. It seeks to provide a broad theoretical and conceptual framework to understand debates about the form and function of the family and the social, economic and cultural factors that shape family structure, organisation, experience and change.

Current social policy debates are framed around new anxieties about families, parenting and community cohesion. The unit explores shifting theoretical and conceptual understandings of the family in the context of broad, social and economic change. It examines issues in relation to our experience of family life and locates these understandings within current social welfare and policy debates about the role of the family, the limits of state welfare and community constraints and resources    

The Lifelong Curriculum

This unit aims to equip students with an understanding of key considerations in curriculum design.  It explores questions such as

• How do we design the curriculum and how do we implement the curriculum
• What is meant by lifelong learning?

These two questions interlink to further explore how lifelong learning might be promoted and how it is situated within both historical and current educational policy discussion.

Introduction To Educational Philosophy

This unit will introduce you to a range of philosophical concepts and methods relevant to the study of education. We will consider how philosophical concepts and methods can be applied to, and may transform our understanding of, educational questions and contexts.

This unit develops work begun on the Yr1 Key Concepts module, and looks ahead to Investigating the Social World (Yr2, Sem2), Reading Philosophy & Education (Yr3, Sem1), and the Year 3 Dissertation. Although this unit feeds naturally into Reading Philosophy & Education, it is not a requirement of that unit.

Creative Writing

This unit introduces you to the field of creative writing, particularly the two genres of short story and poetry. Its governing rationale is that writing is a process that can be broken down into three phases: Gathering, Shaping and Finishing. 

Obviously, you will write, and rewrite, a lot. Most of the writing will be on your own, outside the classroom. But some of it will be with others, in small group workshops. And in workshops, we share what we write. We play nice and we share.

Shakespeare And His Contemporaries

• To provide you with considerable practice in reading English Renaissance plays in their historical context.
• To provide you with an in-depth knowledge of the philosophical, cultural and political conditions in which English Renaissance drama was produced and received.
• To extend your understanding of some of the major genres and sub-genres of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including comedies, tragedies, tragic-comedies and revenge tragedies.
• To consolidate your knowledge of some of the major playwrights of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, including Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, Webster and Middleton.
• To build upon your existing understanding of university-level literary research, including library and Internet searches and the use of English Studies and Performing Arts databases.
• To provide you with opportunities to undertake a review of a production of an English Renaissance play, and to write a comparative essay on two of the plays studied, well supported by individual tutorials.
• To help you to choose your dissertation topic and optional units for the final year of your studies.

Discourse And Ideology

• To introduce you to a variety of approaches to conversation analysis.
• To get you to apply conversation analysis techniques to the analysis of power asymmetries in everyday conversation and/or institutional talk.
• To introduce you to key concepts in critical language study.
• To get you to apply insights from critical language study to controversies in contemporary society over the relationship between discourse and power.
• To consolidate your knowledge of university-level research, including library and Internet searches and the use of English Studies and Linguistics’ databases.
• To provide you with opportunities to research and write essays on areas covered in the unit, with the help of one-to-one tutorial support.

Telling Tales: Early Modern Literature

As C.S. Lewis once noted, ‘French poets, in the eleventh century, discovered or invented, or were the first to press, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth. They effected a change that has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched, and they erected impassable barriers between us and the classical past or the oriental present. Compared with this revolution, the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.’

This unit will look at the invention of romantic love by the troubadours in the South of France in the High Middle Ages and its subsequent impact on both Italian Literature and English Literature in the Late Middle Ages, particularly the writings of Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer.

Restoration Literature

How did Restoration literature engage with the political and social concerns of the period?

You will gain a broad knowledge of a variety of writings from the Restoration and an awareness of ways in which these writings engage with some key issues and concerns of the period.  You will develop your ability to analyse the formal aspects of literary texts and your appreciation of the importance of genre in study of literature.  You will have the opportunity to improve your oral presentation skills and develop your skills in research and writing.  

Eighteenth-Century Literature

How did eighteenth century literature engage with the political and social concerns of the period?

You will gain a broad knowledge of a variety of writings from the eighteenth century and an awareness of ways in which these writings engage with some key issues and concerns of the period.  You will develop your ability to analyse the formal aspects of literary texts and your appreciation of the importance of genre in study of literature.  You will be able to follow particular interests as you devise and research a long essay.

Romantic Literature

This unit builds on the brief introduction to this period you encountered at Level 4 in ‘Literature and History’ and on the understanding of genres and theory you encountered at Level 4 in ‘Practising Ideas’. You will study a range of Romantic texts including poetry, novels, and criticism. You will think about how the production and consumption of various types of literature contributed to ideas about the self and society during this period, particularly in terms of religion, science, gender, and the Arts.

Victorian Literature

This unit builds on the brief introduction to this period you encountered at Level 4 in ‘Literature and History’, on the understanding of genres and theory you encountered at Level 4 in ‘Practising Ideas’, and on the work explored in the Level 5 unit, ‘Romantic Literature’. You will study a range of Victorian texts including novels, novellas, short stories, poetry and journalism. You will think about how the production and consumption of various types of literature contributed to ideas about the self and society, particularly in terms of religion, science, gender, and the Arts.

Children And Young People’S Wellbeing

With an increasing amount of young people experiencing mental health issues and an increasing awareness of this in society and in particular in education, this unit will support students’ understanding of contemporary social and emotional issues in education. Students will gain an understanding of how to support children and young people in a variety of contexts. 

Contemporary Debates In Education, Childhood And Youth

This unit aims to support you in developing an informed and critical stance in relation to major debates in education, childhood and youth. You will complete 40 hours in a relevant work placement to explore and analyse key debates in that professional context. In this unit you will consider some issues become major debates and the role of:

The media

Political institutions

Interest groups

Political lobbing and campaigns

This unit will equip you with the skills you need to investigate and understand key controversies, and to be able to debate and evaluate those controversies. The format will allow you to discuss how debate works and to develop your understanding of the ways in which policies and ideas are formed.

Dissertation

To plan, carry out and write up an independent research project with guidance from a dissertation supervisor. This will involve you in identifying a topic that is of interest to you, relevant to your course and is important in the context of wider research and policy and practice debates. Undertaking individual research offers the opportunity to develop a variety of skills in planning and managing a project, including ethical issues and working with participants, gathering, analysing and reporting data.

Representations Of Disability

In this unit we will help you to find the answers to the following questions:

• How is disability understood and represented in a variety of media?
• What can these representations tell us about how disability is regarded and experienced?

This unit will equip you with the skills you need to investigate disability and the media. It will help you understand key concepts in the visualisation of disability and how representations influence perceptions of disability. The workshop format will allow you to discuss concepts and examples of representation and to develop your own understanding of a particular representation of disability and to communicate that understanding.

Perspectives On Pedagogy And Behaviour

How are issues related to behaviour understood in education in the UK and other countries? Does policy and provision for individuals with impairments related to behaviour vary nationally and globally?

This unit aims to critically analyse the main issues arising from the identification of and provision for individuals with impairment labels associated with behavioural difficulties in national and global contexts.

Relevance: The national and global educational agenda for young people is increasingly focused on human rights, equality and inclusion. This agenda raises many questions around the impact of the inclusion of children and young people with impairments related to behaviour on the human rights of their peers.

Reading Philosophy And Education

What are the relationships between philosophy and educational research? In what ways foes philosophy shed light on education, and education on philosophy? How might be philosophy be adopted as a critical method – a way of “doing” educational research? 

This unit will address these, among other, pertinent questions. Rather than adopt a strict view of what counts as philosophy, the focus of this unit is on promoting and development the sophistication of your critical and dialogical skills.

Children's And Young Adult Fiction

• To provide you with considerable practice in reading fictions for children in their historical and cultural contexts.
• To introduce you to theoretical approaches relevant to the study of children’s fiction.
• To familiarise you with a range of fictional genres written/produced for children, including contemporary film adaptations of traditional fairy tales, classic works of fantasy fiction, works of popular fiction, war fiction, and a range of contemporary ‘issues’ novels written for young adults.
• To consolidate your knowledge of some of the major writers/producers of fictions for children, including Disney, C.S. Lewis, Blyton, Dahl, Serraillier, Anne Fine and Benjamin Zephaniah, amongst others.
• To build upon your existing understanding of university-level literary research, including library and Internet searches and the use of English Studies and Children’s Literature databases.
• To provide you with opportunities to research and write an essay and phase test on fictions for children.

Gothic Literature

How has Gothic Literature been shaped and influenced by social and cultural change?

From its earliest incarnation on Christmas Day, 1764 (the date of publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto), through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the twenty-first century and the phenomenon of the Twilight trilogy, Gothic literature has responded to periods of change and periods of crisis.  Incorporating a variety of genres – the novel form, short stories, poetry, architecture and painting – Gothic literature, according to Clive Bloom, provides ‘a coherent philosophy of thinking’. It is often produced at times of great cultural crisis, such as the end of a century, or at times of war or revolution and many early writers of Gothic literature were advocates of radical politics. Through studying a range of Gothic fiction, its historical contexts, as well as certain theoretical approaches such as Freud’s notion of ‘The Uncanny’, you will gain an understanding of this varied genre, the experiences of the contemporary reader and our own responses to this captivating fictional genre.

Dissertation (English Literature)

To undertake a self-directed dissertation with support and guidance producing either a research dissertation or a creative writing project.  

The project enables you to draw on the breadth of skills developed over the duration of the course. The unit aims to encourage autonomy and requires you to manage your own research project with some supervision.

Postmodern British And American Literature

This unit examines a broad selection of literature, theory and aspects of popular culture from the mid-twentieth century to the contemporary. We look closely at literature, art and culture of the post-war period and examine how far work produced during this period can be considered ‘postmodern’. You will also examine and discuss important theories of postmodernism, gender and aesthetics, all of which will help you understand cultural and literary developments of the modern age. In the final sessions, we consolidate all of this knowledge by an examination of a selection of contemporary British and American poets and in relation to new developments in literary theory, in particular ‘ecocriticism’.

Modern Irish Literature

How has Irish Literature been shaped and influenced by social, political and cultural change?

In this unit you will discover and explore some of the rich literature of modern Ireland. Through your increasing knowledge of the religious and cultural divides in Ireland, you will examine Irish society’s impact on the authors of seminal texts and the texts’ impact on Irish society, gaining a broad knowledge of Irish literature, written by writers from both the Protestant and Catholic communities and reading an understanding of Irish literature in a postcolonial context and in the context of Irish history. 

World Literature: Crossing Borders

A literary text becomes part of world literature when it leaves the space of its original culture and enters the space of another culture, a space that is often defined by that culture’s national tradition and the needs and the values of its own readers and writers. In this unit, we will look at the ways in which we read literary texts from other cultures, as well as the ways in which those cultures read their own texts.

We will attempt to read these texts with what David Damrosch calls ‘detached engagement’, putting them in the contexts of their original cultures both to decrease and to increase the distance between us and them, to make the texts simultaneously less strange and more strange, suggesting both less difference and more difference between cultures. In other words, we will supply just enough context so that we can hear the text speak to us, but hear it speak to its original audience, too. 

We will read texts written with both of these audiences very much in mind by writers who are interested in the process and the pace of globalisation and who often see themselves as members of a global community.

Research In Action

This unit will further develop the research skills required at level 6, and will be of particular interest to those considering postgraduate study.

Topics offered will be based on current research interests of members of the team and so the unit might focus on an author, a genre, a period or a theoretical approach to literature which is not covered in depth by other units.  The unit will particularly develop the research skills of the students as they work with the lecturer to deepen their understanding of the topic on offer.  

Possible topics (to be chosen by the tutor) include:

• Single author/poet studies (for example, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Veronica Forrest-Thomson)
• Genre studies (for example detective fiction, neo-Victorian fiction, twenty-first century literature, fantasy fiction)
• Period studies (for example, Edwardian fiction)
• Archival study (specifically the Hockliffe and Cinderella collections)
• Avant garde poetry
• Language/linguistics

Professional Practice Year (Education And English Language)

The unit aims to provide you with the opportunity to gain formally recognised appropriate work based learning. It will allow you to develop your employability skills and reflect on your personal and professional development as part of a four year degree course. The experience of work that you gain can be applied in your final year of study.

The Professional Workplace

This unit aims to help you understand the role of a chosen graduate professional in their workplace. What does their role entail? What are the types of professional relationships that your chosen person has to develop? How does he/she interact with different agencies and why are these interactions important? What are the barriers in these interactions to achieving workplace goals?
This unit will help you reflect on your own personal development as a professional and give you some insight into the breadth and complexity of graduate professional roles.

Modernist Literary Practices

This unit examines a broad selection of literature, theory and aspects of popular culture from the late nineteenth century to first half of the twentieth century. In particular, we examine pioneering works that are considered exemplary of literary ‘modernism’. As part of your developing knowledge of this period of modernity, we will consider the conflicting, often contradictory and varying versions of literary modernism and examine these alongside broader social, cultural and political developments.