Childhood and Education in Diverse Societies MA

Course content

What will you study on the MA Childhood and Education in Diverse Societies?

The course is built around the following core ideas:

• Diversity
  You will explore how people have tried to make sense of difference and how these ideas can help us think critically about diversity by looking at feminist, queer, and anti-colonial perspectives. You will focus on these fresh insights to help you think about practice in new ways.
• Policies
  You will complete in-depth analysis of how policies affect children and young people drawing on case studies from a range of interesting contexts around the world.
• Social justice
  You will be given opportunities for placements and work experience modules which have a focus on having an impact in the real world.

What will you gain?

You will learn how to think with theory to help tackle old problems in innovative and exciting ways, and understand how policy shapes practice, and crucially, how practitioners can work with policy to promote social justice. You will reflect on your own strengths and development needs to be better placed to have a positive impact as well as being able to utilise, conduct and evaluate research to help others.

This module will investigate how policy works to define and reflect diversity, how professionals enact policy and how it affects children and young people by using case studies from around the world. You will develop your capacity to critically understand and work with policy to pursue social justice in a context that is relevant to your work interests.

This module will focus on a range innovative theoretical frameworks to question common-sense perceptions of diversity in order to generate new insights into practice with children and young people. You will focus on putting these ideas into practice, generating novel solutions to real-life problems.

This module focuses on practical research strategies for working with children and young people. You will encounter and use a range of strategies and examine the legal and ethical aspects of undertaking research. You will develop practical skills and devise a research proposal for an individual research project.

This module is about volunteering or working within an organisation to contribute to improving children’s lives. Placements can be in informal education settings, charities, museums, community groups or any other relevant organisation. The focus is on learning through making a positive difference and developing advanced skills for employability.

This module will support you to evaluate the impact of an innovation you design and to report the findings to demonstrate your ability to have a positive impact on practice.

This module is aimed at those who are already employed in a role working with children.

This module enables you to design your own unique learning project. A supervisor will help you identify your own learning objectives and guide you to structure a project that meets your own individual interests.

This module will give you the opportunity to devise and conduct your own research project with young people. The outcomes will be reported through a conference paper, presented at the university, and a research article, written in the format of an academic journal. Practical workshops and an individual supervisor will provide support to develop your practical skills and confidence required to communicate your findings in the required formats.

You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Module and programme information is indicative and may be subject to change.