MA-level Education CPD Modules

This Masters Level module is for primary and secondary teachers at all levels of their career (including NQTs, PGCE Mentors, Heads of Department, Heads of Year, Assistant and Deputy Headteachers, Headteachers, SENCOs, Inclusion Managers).

The module will include a mix of practical and work-based activities, collaborative tasks, tutor and documented input, guided reading and independent study.

It includes:

• Research with teachers on SEN & behaviour
• Diagnosing need or in need of diagnosis
• Inclusion: are there limits?
• Challenging the deficit model
• ADHD: a case study of participatory research
• Researching school-based violence
• Autism: ethnographic research into SEN and exclusion from school
• Critical and cultural theoretical approaches to analysing ‘behaviour disorders’
• School-wide behaviour policy and classroom environments.

Summative assessment will be through a 5000-word case study synthesising theories with the practitioner’s own and/or school’s SEN, behaviour and inclusion practice. Module delivered in partnership with The Bridge London Training Centre in Islington, where most sessions will take place.

Head of Programme: Dr Sarah Pearce; Module Leader: Dr Anna Carlile| MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

This Module, in partnership with The Whitechapel Gallery, Cubitt and The South London Gallery, gives you the opportunity to engage in a study of contemporary art practices in order to develop pedagogical and artistic knowledge and understanding. It is aimed at initiating and extending practical, critical and contextual understanding of contemporary art practices and how these can be used to explore social and cultural issues. You will engage with contemporary theory in critical and cultural studies such as semiotics, hermeneutics, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis.

HoP and Module Leader: Dr Esther Sayers; MA Arts and Learning

This module, in partnership with Tate Modern, continues to support and develop your praxis (practice with theory) through engaging with the theories and concepts of Critical Pedagogy. You will explore the potential of the artist-teacher to operate at a level beyond orthodoxy - toward a critical pedagogy. Contemporary art practices will be placed within a socio-political framework to illustrate the position of artist-educators within this current and critical pedagogical agenda. Key critical pedagogues: Paulo Freire, Ira Shor, Antonio Darder and Henry Giroux as well as the theories and philosophies of John Dewey, Jean Piaget and Karl Marx. Core Module for MA Arts and Learning.

Assessment: End of module exhibition/presentation-practice; VIVA (30 minutes); Essay (3000 words).

Head of ProgrammeP and Module Leader: Dr Esther Sayers; MA Arts and Learning

This module explores the connection between literature, culture and diversity. In recent decades various genres have been appropriated to give voice to other ways of living and new literature has grown up around these experiences. In this module, we explore what is distinctive about children’s literature and enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of literature for children and young people by exploring a variety of genres and themes. Each session will engage with a different aspect of these broad areas and consider the interrelationship between literature, culture and wider questions of diversity. Students will become aware of the relationship between constructions of childhood and published texts for children, and consider how far these represent and reflect the diversity of human experience and challenge stereotypes.

Head of Programme and Module Leader: Dr Julia Hope; MA Children's Literature

This module supports you in designing and pursuing an ‘action research’ project in a suitable context to which you have/can arrange access. You will pursue a piece of 'action research', investigating a learning environment, in which you design an intervention based on literature. You will construct a project to engage child or young adult readers in reading and responding to children's literature through talk, writing, performance, and/or the making of artefacts. You will keep a journal to develop reflexivity, assemble a portfolio of children’s work, analyse the observations and data, and in seminars present ideas for discussion with peers. Through these seminar discussions, you will learn how to adapt and change the project, how to report on ‘work in progress’ and how to apply learning theory, talk analysis and reader-response theory. By the end of your project, you will be able to produce lucid accounts of this original research.

Head of Programme: Dr Julia Hope
Module Tutor: Professor Michael Rosen; MA Children's Literature

This module is the core taught module of the MA in Education: Culture, Language and Identity. As such, it provides an introduction to the concepts of culture, language and identity and explains why they matter in the study of educational theory and practice. The module will investigate the social and cultural nature of teaching and learning and how teacher and learner identities are formed. It will explore a range of material from British and other national contexts, enabling students to become familiar with some of the main ways in which ‘culture’, ‘language’ and ‘identity’ have been conceptualised. This will form a starting point from which these ideas can be developed in other modules on the programme. The module will also provide students with support for their academic development. In addition to considering the content of the chapters and articles we read, we will dissect the structure, argument and tone of key writings to enable students to develop their own abilities as readers and writers at this level.

Head of Programme and Module Leader: Sarah Pearce; MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

This module begins by exploring the links between language, culture and experience, using autobiographies of migration as a means of understanding entry into a new world at different stages of life. We examine ethnographic studies of language and literacy learning in cross-cultural contexts, inquiring into how language users deploy bilingual and biliterate resources in homes, schools and communities. We consider the role of migration in the negotiation of pupil/teacher identities and the relative status of different languages and language varieties in interactions inside and outside the classroom. We discuss how power relationships and beliefs about global languages, majority and minority languages, standards and vernaculars shape the construction of bilingual/bicultural identities, including students’ identities as learners. This body of research challenges deficit perspectives on the nature of teaching and learning in schools, and investigates how teachers and students can negotiate an inclusive classroom culture, what the use of culturally-responsive pedagogies might look like and what the role of creativity, criticality and new technologies might be across a range of learning settings. Finally, we compare the UK and international research into curricula that validate and enrich students’ bilingual/bicultural repertoires and experiences. Throughout this module, the examination of case studies of learners of different ages and from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds enable us to critically engage with a wealth of theoretical and methodological perspectives to bilingualism and biculturalism in education and reflect on how these perspectives can enrich our own academic and professional lives.

HoP: Dr Sarah Pearce

Module Leader: Dr Vally Lytra | MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

Leadership in schools and learning organisations requires educators to manage large, complex systems.  This requires specialised understandings and strategies, ranging from a deep comprehension of how policy is made and implemented to the professional development of staff members in order to develop empowering, collaborative relationships. In this module we engage with issues of equity, identity, self-awareness, policy into practice, youth participation in governance, learning as leadership, organisation, change management, and the embedding of meaningful strategic objectives through pragmatic action. We examine the relationship between management and education, considering what this means in practical terms in the school context, through developing the skills necessary for effective communication, strategic thinking, and the leading of whole-school initiatives. The link between theory and practice will be the backbone of our seminars, with sessions delivering both a critical analysis and exposition of leadership strategies with which to engage.

Head of Programme: Dr Veronica Poku
Module Leader: James Titley

This module focuses on issues of race, ethnicity and cultural diversity in education. We will begin by considering what these terms mean, before discussing how and why ethnic and racial boundaries have been constructed through history, and across the world, and to what extent people accept or contest these boundaries. We will pay particular attention to the history of the concept of racism, and to some of its contemporary manifestations. We will consider what a positive but critical stance on global diversity might look like. From these starting points, we will move on to consider how these concepts impact on education. Issues such as the nature of the teacher’s role in the classroom, how ethnicity and race influence teacher-student interactions, and what knowledge is valued will be investigated. We will also consider how other aspects of identity, notably social class and gender, intersect with ethnicity and race to affect learning and learner identities in different ways. The module aims to challenge stereotypes and notions of identities as fixed and unchanging. It invites participants to reflect on their own background and experience, and to explore how this influences their own understandings of racialisation and identity. Throughout the module, we will consider strategies and discourses which lead to a more inclusive socio-cultural approach to teaching and learning, and to experience the complexity of trying to create an inclusive multicultural classroom ourselves.

Head of Programme: Dr Sarah Pearce
Module Leader: Dr Veronica Poku; MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

This module provides students with the opportunity to develop a theoretical understanding of creative writing practices and pedagogies and develop insights into creative writing practices that provide a critical perspective on relations and discourses of teaching and learning in contemporary educational contexts. This module relates to the Workshop in Creative and Life Writing and enables students to develop more detailed knowledge and increased confidence in combining their skills as both writers and educators. Students will work in collaboration with local cultural institutions and develop advanced knowledge and understanding of recent and relevant literature relating to writing practices, education, and educational research, and be able to demonstrate a grasp of current major issues in the field of creative writing.

Head of Programme and Module Leader: Dr Francis Gilbert; MA Creative Writing and Education

This module explores the diverse range of factors that influence the education of young children, including theories about childhood and learning, cultural views about what is appropriate for young children, sociological, economic and political factors as well as perceptions of the gendered nature of early childhood education and care. This module offers the opportunity to explore key ideas and issues in the area of young children’s learning, with special reference to the cultural context of that learning including the study of educational theory and practice with particular reference to culture, language and identity. It will also involve an interrogation of pedagogical approaches and assumptions including the importance of play in children’s learning and development, the role of families and the community in the education of young children. The module will explore key concepts of childhood, young children’s social and cognitive development, the political and cultural context of policy development. In all areas of the course, students will be encouraged to explore the development of early years policy and practice from a historical, cultural and universal perspective. We will also explore the importance of language in the development of identity and principles of inclusion. Through this module, you will develop a critical understanding of the key ideas and principles, which relate to the education and development of young children. The historical and cultural context of theories on child development and early childhood education will help you to locate the concept of a “developmentally appropriate curriculum”. The course will also involve the examination of alternative models of the Early Years curriculum, both nationally and internationally in addition to providing an opportunity to identify and debate the social and cultural factors that contextualise children’s learning in the early years.

Head of Programme: Dr Sarah Pearce
Module leader: Dr Betty Liebovich; MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

This module considers various forms of masculinity and femininity and how they impact upon identity, and upon education. In it, we discuss the social construction of masculinities and femininities and how this construction is enacted through and underpinned by the ways in which gender roles are practised. We will consider how stereotypical gender roles —and the behaviour they prescribe— are learned, and how these impact on our sense of ourselves and of others. We will also look at the extent to which personal identity, including gender identity, is affected by expectations of masculinity and femininity in Western society. The module will also be concerned with how particular masculinities and femininities and the identities associated with them affect how people are able to learn, both inside and outside of educational institutions. We will also look at the role of policy – state and educational – in reifying particular gender identities.

The topics we will address include:

• the intersection of race/class with masculinity and femininity
• girls, bodies, and identity
• queer bodies
• adolescent masculinities and femininities
• how particular forms of masculinity and femininity relate to school curricula, schooling, and the school experience

Head of Programme: Sarah Pearce | Module leader: Dr Sheryl Clark | MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

There have been significant changes in approaches to second/foreign language teaching in recent years and increasing recognition that plurilingual competence and the ability to navigate cultural difference are key skills for global citizenship and for culturally diverse societies. This MA module considers approaches to language teaching across the areas of foreign and community language teaching as well as English as an Additional Language and English mother tongue. Whilst critically reviewing recent developments in theories of language and literacy, links are made to the realities of the classroom and strategies for effecting change.

The module includes the following topics:

• overview of language learning in multilingual school contexts: issues of policy and pedagogy
• theories of second language acquisition and bilingualism, methods for the teaching of second/foreign languages including the role of motivation and attitudes
• drawing on children's home languages across the curriculum and building
• partnerships between mainstream and complementary schools
• multilingual digital literacies; developing intercultural competence
• developing knowledge about language and language learner strategies
• creativity in the language classroom
• content and language integrated learning (CLIL)

Head of Programme: Dr Sarah Pearce
Module Leader: Dr Cristina Ros i Solé; MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity

This module explores how education policy is created, interpreted and put into practice in schools and classrooms. You will explore the political context in which the UK education system operates, before considering two key of examples of recent Government policy, one relating to the curriculum, the other to the effects of a market system in education. You will also look at examples of local policy initiatives, so that you can develop your understanding of how both teachers and students can influence policy as well as understanding how policy impacts on them.

In the second part of the module, you will select a national, local or school policy of your choice for further research, and will be asked to participate in a student-led session to share this learning. This will form the basis of the assignment, which is in two parts: the first part is a professional document or a piece of writing which supports a professional document (e.g. a scheme of work, a CPD session, or a review of a behaviour policy) and the second will be an essay discussing the context for the document, and how your understanding of teaching and learning and educational policy has informed this work.

A key aim of the module is to enable participants to consider how to develop and respond to policy in ways which are both principled and empowering. It will be of interest to all education professionals, in particular, those who wish to move into middle and senior management roles in schools.

Head of Programme and Module Leader: Dr Sarah Pearce; MA Education, Culture, Language and Identity

This module is the core taught module of the MA in Education: Culture, Language and Identity. As such, it provides an introduction to the concepts of culture, language and identity and explains why they matter in the study of educational theory and practice. The module will investigate the social and cultural nature of teaching and learning and how teacher and learner identities are formed. It will explore a range of material from British and other national contexts, enabling students to become familiar with some of the main ways in which ‘culture’, ‘language’ and ‘identity’ have been conceptualised. This will form a starting point from which these ideas can be developed in other modules on the programme. The module will also provide students with support for their academic development. In addition to considering the content of the chapters and articles we read, we will dissect the structure, argument and tone of key writings to enable students to develop their own abilities as readers and writers at this level.

Head of Programme and Module Leader: Sarah Pearce; MA Education: Culture, Language and Identity