BA (Hons) Education

This module provides you with an introduction to issues of culture and identity. These are very complex concepts which will underpin your understanding of most areas of your degree. The approach we will take on the course will be based in sociology and cultural studies. Within this, people are viewed as having multiple positions in terms of constructing their own identities. There is no such thing as having one identity or of there being one essential identity that fundamentally defines who we actually are. Who we are, depends on our socio-political position within society. The key concepts of knowledge, power and status also play a major role in how others define us which in turn affects how we view our own identities. As such, identity, like culture, is relational, multifaceted and variable and is in a constant state of flux. This module crucially allows you to bring within the classroom your own personal experiences of identity and culture and discuss them within an academic and theoretical framework.

A central question to think about throughout the course is: in the modern global world that we are a part of, how do we negotiate our own identities as we cross geographical, political, social and psychological borders? Your first assignment allows you to explore the issue of identity by examining your own life history. Other aspects of identity are traced through important ideas and forces which shape our sense of self, specifically, the family, childhood and adolescence, citizenship, globalisation and schooling, social class, gender, race and language. Your second assignment allows you to look at one of these in more detail. 

In this module, we'll be asking:

• What are schools and universities for?
• What is at stake in constructing a 'curriculum'?
• Who should decide what goes on a curriculum and what stays off?
• What counts as knowledge?
• Why do some forms of knowledge carry so much weight and others so little?
• Why are we all, as children and young people, required to learn history but not, say, hairdressing?

In this module, you'll explore how understanding of such questions has changed over time and in relation to different forms of society from the late-eighteenth century to the present day. You'll examine the relationship between curriculum and power, not least in relation to colonisation. 

We'll look at the curriculum in the present school system in the UK. The historical development of a broad range of sectors (early years, primary, secondary, further and higher education) is explored in relation to political, social and cultural histories. It will ask what is meant when we talk about "education in a democracy" or more specifically "education for a democracy" and consider how curriculum has been formulated in relation to issues of class, race, gender and disability. 

During the course of this module you'll develop a clear and critical understanding of why curriculum is important and how it shapes the contemporary world.

Understanding Learning focuses on exploration of theories of learning, and how they relate to creative processes. This module includes reflective, expressive and academic processes. You'll create collaboration, explore interpretations, and a further understanding of how creative learning and thinking relate to cultural and social issues. This will contribute to future study and careers, for example in education, community and social work, and with cultural organisations.    

The sessions combine lectures and seminars on theories of learning, with explorations of the meanings of these theories through verbal and visual communication, movement, film and sound. You'll be introduced to readings that problem-pose how concepts of being a child are culturally constructed, and ways of understanding creative learning processes. The readings contribute to the knowledge of child development, feminism, post-colonial theory, and research on creativity in learning. The module’s ethos is that everyone can build an understanding of learning with creative practices.

In this module, subtitled ‘Everything is a Text’, you will consider the value of different types of texts and ways of imparting knowledge and ideas. You will reflect upon your identities as learners and future professionals in the world, considering a range of contexts: the academic/educational context, personal settings and the eco-systems that you live and work in. These reflections will be used to inform your practices as academic learners.

You will explore academic literacies, different ways of knowing and consider what counts as ‘legitimate’ knowledge. You will engage with critical thinking, making arguments and establishing criteria to defend intellectual positions and these skills will be acknowledged as social practices that produce and reinforce meaning and frameworks of understanding and knowledge.

Furthermore, you will engage with a wide range of academic and non-academic material, individuals and environments in order to contribute to discussions regarding attitudes and assumptions about ideas and experience, including within labour markets, cultural hegemonies, distributions of power and the relationship between the individual and society. In this way, the social interactions, relationships and contexts that underpin academic literacies in higher education will be made explicit.

You will discuss these ideas with students and tutors from the different subjects at Goldsmiths, and learn to be part of the wider university community. You will also be able to submit an assignment which could be a written, graphically designed, audio, video, or negotiated project. You will get to choose the assessment that best shows what you can do.

This module, subtitled ‘Researching Our World & Lives’, builds on the conceptual and contextual foundations of Identity, Agency and Environment 1.

You will learn how to conduct academic research and will be offered the opportunity to broaden and deepen your understanding of the relationship between your own interests, skills, values, career and non-career aspirations, the concepts, theories and contexts of your discipline, and the world.

You will reflect upon your identities as researchers, and learn how the research skills you’ve acquired both within your studies and the world more generally can be related to problem-solving in a wide range of contexts. You will consider your agency as researchers, what you can and cannot research, the ethical issues involved, and think reflexively about your position as a researcher in a range of environments and eco-systems.

Formal conventions of academic research and writing will be integrated into your individualised contexts and goals, enabling the expression of ideas and perspectives that may challenge the status quo. The module will encourage creativity, activism, decision-making and the formation of judgements leading to action-planning in relation to research topics and types of evidence, and professional planning.

You will learn to critique your own subject disciplines. Interdisciplinary sharing of knowledge will ensure that assessment and learning practices provide you with the opportunity to develop new lines of thinking and knowing, within formative collaborative learning and research communities.

This compulsory module will introduce you to qualitative research methods and how they are used in social and cultural research.  We will explore how qualitative research is understood and how it differs from quantitative methods. This will involve considering the sorts of things that can be understood through qualitative research and how we can go about researching them.  Work in the module will prepare you both to read and evaluate social and cultural research and to conduct a small research project of your own in year 3. The course supports your work throughout the BA Education degree by developing your ability to make a detailed critique of a research paper and by teaching you how to design research projects of your own. 

In order to begin to prepare you for undertaking the Dissertation module in year 3, we will introduce you to some key qualitative research strategies and methods of data gathering. Some of the strategies we will cover include ethnography, grounded theory, life history/biography, and case-studies.  Some of the methods of data collection we will cover include qualitative interviewing, group interviews, participant observation, online research, discourse and conversation analysis. Linked to these strategies and methods we investigate sampling, gaining access to the research field, ethical questions, conducting a literature review, writing up methodology and doing data analysis. We will also explore (briefly) what quantitative methods entail. We will analyse examples of published qualitative research in order to show how theory can be grounded in research practice and to help us think about particular problems in methodology. The course culminates in the preparation of a research proposal which can be used as a basis for the compulsory Year 3 Dissertation.

We will seek to nurture a critical and reflexive approach to research: one where knowledge, wisdom and understanding are both subject and object of enquiry, probing the interpretive gaps and forms of power inevitably bound up in their pursuit. 

Our academic departments are developing exciting elective ideas to allow you to broaden your education, either to develop vocationally orientated experiences or to learn more about contemporary society, culture and politics. You’ll be able to choose safe in the knowledge that these modules have been designed for non-subject specialists and to bring students from different disciplines together. For example, you may want to take introductions to areas such as Law, Education, the digital industries, the creative industries,think like a designer or understand the history and politics behind our current affairs.

Lots of students join Goldsmiths because they want to make a difference in society, to bring about positive change and develop skills and experiences which will allow them to access exciting careers. Goldsmiths’ Social Change module will allow you to do work on group projects with students from other departments to bring about change. You’ll be introduced to the UN’s Sustainable Development goals and core project management theories and practices allow you to work across a number of weeks towards a final Festival of Ideas where you’ll report work back to the academic and local community.

The aim of this module is to provide you with critical thinking, reading and writing skills that enable them to plan and produce an empirical research project of your choice. 

You'll choose a relevant topic to your studies or wider experience, which builds on your research proposal written in the Year Two for module, Introduction to Social and Cultural Research. This topic will be agreed in consultation with your dissertation supervisor.