Education

In your Supplementary Application Questionnaire (SAQ) you should indicate which track you’re interested in studying.

You attend four to six lectures and seminars, and one or two hours of supervision per week in the first year.

You’re assessed at the end of each year. Depending on the papers studied, this will be through coursework, written examination, or a combination of both. In the third year, all students also submit a dissertation.

You take four papers, including two compulsory Education papers:

• Critical Debates in Education – introducing major themes in education and Faculty research
• Language, Communication and Literacies – exploring the social, psychological and material context within which spoken language and literacy are developed

Your two remaining papers are determined by the track you’re following:

• Education, Psychology and Learning – Learning and Human Development, and Introduction to Psychology
• Education, Policy and International Development – Education, Global Inequalities and Social Justice; and a paper from choices in the Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS) and Geography courses
• Education, English, Drama and the Arts – Poetics, Aesthetics and Criticism; and either Drama Production or Literature and Culture

In Year 2, you take five papers. Two are compulsory – Designing Educational Research (a project in research design), and The Emergence of Educational Thinking and Systems (covering historical and philosophical perspectives on key aspects of education) – and you choose your third from several other education topics.

Your other two papers are track dependent:

• Education, Psychology and Learning – Formal and Informal Contexts of Learning, and a psychology paper
• Education, Policy and International Development – International Issues in Inclusion and Diversity in Education, and a paper from the HSPS course
• Education, English, Drama and the Arts – two of International Literatures, Arts and Cultures; Theatre Practice and Production; one paper from a range offered in the English course

You take five papers in the final year. All students take at least two papers on particular issues in education and write a dissertation of 8,000-10,000 words. For the fourth, you can take another issue in education paper, submit a second dissertation, or choose a paper from options in other relevant courses.

Your final paper is track specific:

• Education, Psychology and Learning – Education, Neuroscience and Society
• Education, Policy and International Development – Critical Debates in Education, Policy and International Development
• Education, English, Drama and the Arts – either Children’s Literature, or Performance, Education and Society

For further information about studying Education at the University of Cambridge see the The Faculty of Education website.