Professional Studies

MSc Professional Studies

Part-Time Programme

Why study this course at Birkbeck?

• Use your expertise in the workplace through engaging in academic learning and research at postgraduate level.
• Explore the balance between theoretical knowledge and expert practice within the work environment.
• Evaluate and improve the production of organisational knowledge utilising academic and professional criteria.

With its emphasis on professional practice and development, the programme supports professionals in analysing and evaluating their own practice and in the analysis and application of appropriate conceptual models.

Objectives

On successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Critically evaluate theoretical models of professional expertise in the context of your own practice.
• Deal with complexity and contradictions in the exercise of professional expertise.
• Engage in full professional and academic communications with peers.
• Identify the competing factors involved in making ethical professional decisions.
• Appreciate the extent to which dominant paradigms of professional learning change over time.
• Identify and analyse the complexity of formal and experiential workplace learning.
• Analyse your own professional practice in relation to theoretical models of professional learning.
• Reflect both on your own professional practice, and on more general practice in their professional context.
• Demonstrate awareness of epistemological debates in the major research paradigms and how these structure research approaches.