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. 

Psychology Of Adolescence

To gain an understanding of:
Basic psychological constructs in relation to adolescent 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 adolescence?

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

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?

Key Concepts In Education

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

- What do I need to do to produce academic work to a Higher Education standard?

- What are some of the key concepts and ideas that underpin my subject area and how can I approach them academically?

This unit will equip you with the skills you need to succeed in higher education and will introduce you to the key concepts and knowledge base that underpin your field of study. It will act as an extended induction programme to your degree. You will take an active approach to constructing knowledge in the unit. All sessions are workshops where you will take part in learning activities including discussion, information gathering, analysis, evaluation, debate and written exercises. In the sessions you will complete, share, discuss and develop work. You will undertake guided, focused discussion and analysis of literature and concepts. The assessments will be approached in a step-by-step basis to ensure you are confident in what is required to complete a successful assessment at university.

Safeguarding And Child Protection

Safeguarding processes are intended to allow people to live free from harm. This unit introduces you to a range of safeguarding discourses, practices, and contexts. In particular, you will consider how and why these have changed in recent years. It will offer you opportunities to develop your practical and professional knowledge of safeguarding, and to evidence this by completing relevant safeguarding training; and it prepares the way for students considering the work-placement units at Levels 5 and/or 6. 

Investigating The Social World

This unit aims to equip students with an understanding of different quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigating the social world and, professional settings in particular. More specifically, the unit will seek to:

• Develop your understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research methods and the ways in which research data can be collected, analysed and reported.
• Promote your understanding of the ethical issues involved in undertaking research in professional settings and on sensitive issues.
• Develop your skills in designing and implementing all aspects of a research project.
• Equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to undertake your dissertation at Level 6 where you may use both qualitative and quantitative methods

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.

Policy And Practice In Special Educational Needs And Disability

How does current policy and practice support or hinder the needs of those with special educational needs or disability?

Aim: To explore the extent to which current policy and practice in Special Needs and/or Disability (SEND) education in the UK meet the needs of individuals with SEND.

Relevance: The high proportion of individuals identified with SEND in education institutions in the UK raises issues and debates around the most effective ways of meeting the needs of such individuals in an inclusive society. The most significant Government review of SEND policy and practice in thirty years culminated in 2014 and there are current a range of new policies and practices within the field.

Working With Children And Young People In The Digital Age

This unit aims to support you in developing an informed and balanced knowledge base regarding the increasing presence of technology in children and young people’s lives. You will complete 40 hours in a work placement and engage with academic literature to consider:
1. What are the challenges and opportunities experienced by children and young people in the digital age?
2. What are the potential implications of new technologies for children and young people’s welfare, education and social experiences?

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.

Social Processes And Lifespan Development

The unit explores key topics in developmental and social psychology with a view to addressing the question: How do individuals change and develop across the lifespan?

The aim is for you to develop an understanding of aspects of biological, cognitive and social development from the prenatal stage through to old age with an emphasis on culture, society, and social factors.

This unit encourages critical reading and evaluation of current research articles, and provides an opportunity to conduct and participate in small-scale empirical exercises relevant to the unit topics. This unit aims to allow you to learn academic and transferable skills including writing critical reviews and provides the opportunity to reflect on personal development and career goals.

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

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. 

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.

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.

Psychology Of Mental Health

This unit will allow you to familiarise yourself with the main issues relating mental health problems and therefore help you develop a good grounding towards further study and training or employment in role relating to mental health.
The unit aims to:
• introduce you to the main theoretical and therapeutic approaches to mental health problems
• present and evaluate major aspects in the classification of mental health problems
• familiarise you with the clinical symptoms of the most common psychological disorders
• encourage you to critically discuss aetiological models and therapeutic interventions of the major mental health problems in the light of traditional but also recent concepts and empirical findings
• discuss the importance of socio-cultural factors in the causation, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health problems.

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.

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.

Atypical Child And Adolescent Development: Theories And Applications

The unit addresses the question of what makes a child atypical or exceptional. It therefore looks at the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment or outcomes of atypical development. You will also examine how different issues involved with exceptional children and atypical development affect and are influenced by families, education, and society. The unit aims to:

• introduce an aetiological developmental framework for understanding exceptional children.

• examine cognitive and psychosocial aspects of selected difficulties in learning, perception, attention and emotional and social development.

• introduce key issues in psychological assessment and intervention.

• develop a critical awareness of the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary research in the field of atypical development.

• discuss and evaluate the ways in which practice informs theory in our understanding of human development.

• provide information about research and assessment in developmental psychology and demonstrate how developmental research can be ethically applied in different settings.

• provide illustrations of the application of developmental theory and research to issues in the real world.

This unit has applications for those with interests in the field of education and welfare (teaching, child and adolescent mental health, educational psychology and social work).

Coaching Psychology

This unit aims to enable you to understand what is meant by the concept of coaching.

It also aims to introduce you to the current leading models of coaching psychology and understand the basic principles which inform them.

This unit aims to offer you the opportunity to develop enhanced personal insight and reflection, with the skills to apply this to self-management. It also aims to enable you to recognise, discriminate and apply core coaching and interpersonal skills in a peer coaching role.

The emphasis on skills development is designed with the aim being relevant to further study in the field of work psychology and also to aid your employment and career development.

Critical Debates In Send Education

This unit critically analyses contemporary issues and debates from approaches to policy and practice in the field of Special Needs Education and Disability, and in relation to national and global contexts. The national and global educational agenda for young people is increasingly focused on human rights, equality, social justice and inclusion. This agenda raises a range of questions around theory, policy and practice in Special Educational Needs and/or Disability (SEN/D) education. The way in which we respond to such questions and debates has a profound impact on the educational experience of young people with SEN/D.

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.

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.

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.