Education Studies and History with Foundation Year

An understanding of how individuals learn and the factors that shape learning is fundamental to any study of education. This Level 4 module will introduces you to a range of key theoretical ideas and principles about learning from birth to adulthood. It explores theories that focus on adult learning, for example andragogy, as well as pedagogical ones that centre around child learners, for example behaviourism and constructivism. The module combines a study of these historical approaches with a consideration of contemporary theories such as heutagogy and factors like education policy that shape, or even determine, learning in the 21st Century. It will enable you to draw on your own experiences of learning and will encourage you to critically engage with theories to identify strengths, limitations and the applicability to educational environments. As part of this module you may work on developing key academic skills that will provide a foundation for academic work at all levels of the programme. Such work may include academic reading skills, for example identifying and reading different types of sources, and academic writing skills, such as structuring written assignments. You will undertake a placement that will enable you to apply theoretical perspectives from the module to understand and reflect on pupils’ learning within the education system. The placement also provides you with the opportunity to begin to develop key professional skills. Teaching and learning will proceed by way of interactives lectures, seminars and tutorials, supported by e-learning and VLE-based tasks. Tutor-led seminars will utilise collaborative group work in order to model and enable learning and assist you in developing the skills to study and learn independently. In this module you will develop subject expertise, professional skills and increase graduate attributes, most notably academic literacies and employability.

Building on the fundamental concepts of learning introduced previously in Level 4, this module focuses on the sociology of education and learning, and, primarily, how academic achievement and educational inequality is shaped by society and educational structures. The module provides teaching and classroom-based experiences through which the impact of a variety of sociological factors, such as socio-economic group, gender, ethnicity and human rights can be better understood. Relevant theories and approaches to explaining differences in attainment will be studied, together with an exploration of factors that might contribute to narrowing gaps in educational outcomes. As part of this module you may be expected to investigate and analyse a range of published sources of data on educational attainment and interventions and so learn to interpret and explain data presented in different ways. You will also undertake a placement that will enable you to apply knowledge gained in the module and further develop your transferable skills of communication and organisation, as well as gain further experiences of supporting learning.

This module will introduce students to the importance of individual and collective identities in the study of history. Through examining a variety of key theoretical texts and biographically-focused case studies, largely but not exclusively centred on British history, students will learn about different approaches to the history of identity and its utility for modern historical studies. Students will gain an understanding of a range of theoretical methodologies related to the practice of social and cultural history that will provide a firm foundation for later studies. At its core, the module will introduce students to the principle sources for, and main theoretical approaches taken in, the study of key, often intersecting, identities within the disciplinary area of history, such as: sexuality, class, politics, religion, race, gender and disability.

On this module students will be introduced to the early modern British Isles, broadly covering the period from the Reformation of the English Church to the 1688 Revolution. The module will consider political, social, military, cultural and economic perspectives on a transformational period in the history of the British Isles. By taking a survey approach the module will support students as they gain a wider understanding of this period of history. Consideration will be given to, variously, social structures and lifecycles, reformation and religious change, the rise of parliament and the state, radical politics and revolutionary change, the impact of print culture, the English Civil War, and the role played by urban, rural and maritime/imperial development as drivers of change. In summary, students will come to understand why the period is referred to as 'early modern', neither wholly medieval or modern. The module will engage students in the excellent digitised resources available for this period and introduce students to the vibrant historiographical and methodological approaches to explaining changes in the early modern British Isles, as appropriate, and students will learn how to apply these to the research and analysis of this period of history.

This module introduces you to the study of history at undergraduate level and is a key part of your transition to university. You will gain an initial understanding of the varied nature of the discipline and the range of approaches to it, introducing key areas of theory and practice covered in subsequent modules in history, such as: the significance of schools of historical thought, key source types and popular interpretative approaches. There will be a focus on some of the key critical and practical skills involved in reading, researching and writing history. The use of an engaging case study will contextualise how historians analyse primary sources and how historians engage with the secondary accounts produced by their colleagues. Introductions to information literacy, academic integrity and a range of study skills, such as the reading of academic texts, will be explicitly embedded within the module. You will be encouraged to reflect on your own study skills, learning strategies and approaches. Taught sessions and assessments will encourage your to express your ideas in written and spoken form through discussion, debate and argument. This module is designed to support your progression through subsequent modules in the subject.

On this module students will study late medieval England in particular the various roles, occupations and classes of people in Late Medieval England. Through a survey approach, students will examine the changing nature of various aspect of late medieval society, such as kingship, the aristocracy, feudalism, gender, education, literature and drama. The module will introduce students to recent historiographical debates surrounding the nature and transformation of kingship in this period as well as the extent and nature of conflict between social groups particularly in relation to the Baron’s Wars and the War of the Roses. As well as providing opportunity to understand the significance of powerful late medieval women, the module will also look at gender roles in wider society and how these changed. Students will also study the changing role of religion, how drama was used to promote religious ideas, the development of literature, learning and the transformation of the medieval landscape. The course will introduce students to this formative period of English history and to key historiographical debates. It will use a variety of methodical approaches to enable students to research, analyse and explain various aspects of this period.

This module builds on and develops the basic methods and data interpretation skills developed during Level 4 modules. The module also prepares you for your Dissertation at Level 6 especially if you are intending to pursue a Dissertation (Capstone Project) in Education Studies or other Social Science (at Level 6). You will explore ways in which a range of quantitative and qualitative methods can be brought to the investigation of educational issues. You will apply selected quantitative and qualitative methods and will be introduced to the benefits and difficulties of education research. You will develop your understanding of the range of research methodologies and research methods (data collection tools) that can be used in education research, and further develop your skills of statistical analysis and data interpretation.

An understanding of the principles and practice of inclusive education is crucial to those who intend to work in an educational context. This module will introduce you to the philosophical social justice debate and theories and ideologies of inclusive practice, and will examine interpretations of diversity and inclusion in different contexts. Although matters relating to inclusion are embedded in all modules, this offers you the opportunity to study the topic in depth and to critically analyse and apply a range of theories in the context of your work with young people in a range of educational contexts. It will build on the values, beliefs and philosophies explored in Level 4 modules and extend your appreciation of issues of human rights, equality and equity.

The module will explore the concept of ‘invented histories’: attempts in a variety of popular media to assemble, rearrange, supplement, manipulate, craft, and ultimately invent new narratives about what happened in the past. The module will examine a series of case studies across a range of themes: social, political and military. These can be drawn from any time period: ancient to modern and from any region, country or continent. The media likely to be examined in case studies will be drawn from amongst the following categories:

 • Films and TV shows 

• Literature and historical fiction

 • Propaganda (posters, films, etc.)

 • Games (video and board/card games)

 • Painting/caricature/cartoons/photographs/sculpture

 • Theatre productions (drama, musicals, opera, etc.)

 • Music

 • Social media/internet sites

Each case study will focus on the analysis of a popular representation (or set of representations) of a given historical period, event or person. This representation will be explored as an example of ‘invented’ history that consciously seeks to give the subject depicted a narrative meaning. Students will investigate what narrative is being invented, its accuracy, its influence, academic historical debates on the source matter, and ultimately how useful the source is for the writing of academic history and the communications of findings to the public. Students will be introduced to the concepts of representation, identity (particularly national identity) and memory in historical research. They will gain a deeper understanding of the nature of public engagement with historical topics. Greater understanding of the media representation itself and the history of the period in which the representation was produced is a key learning outcome of the module. Therefore, students will be introduced to the relevant methodological theory underpinning analysis of the given medium, e.g. film history, the study of board and computer game design, visual culture studies, etc.

This module will engage students in a wide-ranging study of the Atlantic World in the early modern period with a particular focus on the 17th and 18th centuries. Through a critical review of secondary texts and a variety of primary source material students will analyse the political, economic, technological, social and cultural history of the Atlantic World, with a particular focus on the ‘Anglophone Atlantic’, its origins, growth and contact with European empires and indigenous peoples in the Americas and Africa. Students will engage with historiographical debates concerning the character of the ‘Atlantic World’ with its competing empires and entities and consider whether this is a useful concept for understanding this period of history. Key themes to be explored include: the importance of the trade in goods and the movement of people, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade; the significance of conflict and co-operation between states, substrate groups and individuals; the importance of identities and how they changed as a result of the Atlantic experience; and the role of science, knowledge and communication in the Atlantic World.

This module will explore a range of protest movements from across the British Isles, setting them in their historical context and investigating their origins, scope, membership, activities and outcomes. By examining a chronological span from the first modern protests to contemporary movements, students will develop an understanding of change and continuity in regard to methods of protest, organisational structures and effectiveness. Students will work critically with a wide set of historical texts and primary sources, including audio and visual evidence. The module will also take account of interdisciplinary work on the theory and conceptual development of social movements, in particular from sociology and political science, reflecting the nature of existing scholarship on popular protest. The examples utilised within the module will focus on British movements, but where appropriate references to global networks, antecedants and legacies will be explored. A range of movements with different motivations will be examined, such as: Chartism, trade unionism and parliamentary reform campaigns; regional and/or national independence campaigns; Suffrage and Women’s rights; Peace movements; Civil Rights and Anti-racism; LGBTQ+ rights; and Environmentalism. Varied methods of protest will be examined, such as: petitions, demonstrations, direct action and the cultivation of cultural movements through music, art and literature.

This module will draw on and develop your understanding and experience of real- world contexts. Building on placement experiences in Level 4 the module explores the wider role(s) of a professional in a setting. It enables you to apply knowledge and skills in a real-life context offering you a valuable experience to draw on when you present yourself to employers or selectors upon graduation. The module will introduce you to key theoretical ideas and principles related to reflective practice and professionalism. It will provide a critical understanding of successful elements for career development including relevant practical guidance on tools to support this such as individual ‘professional context’ action plans, careers advice, CVs, letters of application and personal statements. The syllabus will include a block placement and the study of reflective practice and student-professionalism. You will be introduced to key educational theorists and philosophers concerned with reflective practice such as Dewey, Schὂn and Kolb and the significant contributions of each. You will reflect on your own approaches to reflective practice and further develop critical thinking. The strengths, limitations and general applicability of reflective practice for professionals will be considered carefully in the light of evidence presented and this will be related to your own work on placement. Workshops provide you with the opportunity to participate in academic practices, including developing academic reading and writing skills at level 5 which is embedded in the context of the taught component. This module is deliberately structured in an open-ended way to allow placement to develop in a manner most suited to your potential future career and to respond to opportunities presented by employers.

This module will engage students in a long view of the history of magic, witchcraft and folklore. The module will begin by surveying the complex relationship between religion, health, miracles and magic during the later medieval period. It will then examine the subsequent development across early modern Europe of a culture of witchcraft persecution and prosecution, which will be considered through the lense of fear, often exacerbated by social status and/or gender. Students will finally be tasked to evidence, explain and challenge the meta-narrative for the apparent decline in belief in a witch cult from the 18th century onwards. Students will critically examine evidence for the persistence of pagan and magical beliefs as well as the development of folklore and fairy stories into the ‘modern’, ‘enlightened’ age. Students will be exposed to relevant primary and secondary material in order to engage fully with the case studies and historical sweep of the module and will be expected to critically explain and defend their interpretations. A parallel strand running throughout will be critical analysis of the trajectory of historiographical debate associated with the history of magic and in particular witchcraft and paganism.

This module will engage students in an in-depth assessment of life in Britain during the twenty-year period between the First and Second World Wars. The overarching theme of the module reflects the perennial historiographical debate on whether these years are best seen through a pessimistic lens of political crisis and economic decline, or more positively via a focus on social opportunity and cultural vibrancy. Students will engage in critical discussion of interwar politics, debating issues such as: the rise of the Labour Party, Conservative electoral dominance, the failure of political extremism in the British context and the beginning of the end of Empire. Unemployment and economic challenges will also be covered, alongside the rise of consumerism, home ownership and the growth of leisure activities. Social and cultural change will be examined through a variety of issues such as the experience of women, the decline of the aristocracy and the impact of the wider world upon Britain: for example, the popularity of American jazz music and cinema. The shadow of war will be a key theme throughout, be it the economic and social consequences of the First World War, or international tensions coming out of it that culminated in the 1930s. Students will engage with a range of primary source material, including novels, autobiographies, contemporaneous journalism, oral histories, newsreels and film and wil be expected to engage in and frame their interpretations utilising key, recent historiography.

An awareness of global perspectives on education strengthens Education Studies students’ understanding of educational issues, ideas, and solutions by broadening the scope of study beyond the UK. This module explores the impact of globalisation on education policy and practice in different international settings in varied international, social, economic, and political contexts. The module requires you to take a global perspective on issues and trends such as citizenship, human rights, access to education, and education for sustainable development and relate these to social theories of education and development goals. You will be encouraged to reflect on the global, multicultural nature of our society and your own cultural fluency, and research contrasting perspectives on effective responses to the diversity of international school pupils’ backgrounds, experiences, and needs. You will be required to engage critically with module topics and develop as an independent learner and critical thinker to investigate your chosen area of research.

Excellence and innovation in curricula are a central tenet of any world class education system. This highly responsive module provides you with a theoretical and critical understanding of key considerations in the development and implementation of curriculum policy, content and practice in educational settings. The module considers future developments in the current curriculum and possible alternative future directions. It provides you with an opportunity to study this at first hand in placement settings. A range of theoretical approaches to the curriculum will be critically examined. The syllabus may include topics such as differing views of the nature and organisation of knowledge, and examination of various curriculum frameworks, including aims, content and contemporary views of pedagogy. These will vary over time in order to ensure that the module is responsive to new developments and future directions in education for instance decolonising of the curriculum and environmental education. Innovative practice from inspirational educational settings may be showcased in order to provide models of excellence. Placement will allow you to gain real-world experiences of current curriculum arrangements.

During this module students undertake a wide-ranging critical study of British imperial development during the nineteenth century. The narrative underpinning the module is the increasingly global and expansionist nature of European empires at that time, with Britain in the vanguard of imperialistic, globalising forces. Students will examine the impact of British political and military power, money, technology and culture on the peoples, societies and environments it came into contact with. They will likewise analyse the agency of human responses to imperialism through a mixture of adaptation, co-operation and resistance and be introduced to scholarly research on the geographical and environmental signifance of industrialised imperialism. Additionally, the ways in which British society and culture was transformed by the imperial experience will be a crucial point of consideration with its legacies stretching into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students will utilise relevant secondary texts and a variety of primary sources in order to understand the most significant political, economic, technological, social and cultural aspects of the imperial experience and engage directly with classic and recent historiographical debates about the nature of the British Empire, its origins, purpose, meaning and legacies.

On this module, students are required to undertake a research-based project, drawing on academic advice as well as their own interests and intellectual skills, to produce a research-driven, written dissertation of 8-10,000 words. Students conduct their research by addressing self-formulated questions, supported by the critical selection, evaluation and analysis of primary and secondary source material. By these means they devise and sustain a core argument, and/or solve relevant historical problems, to support the premise of their research question. The advisory role of the supervisor means that students will be empowered to develop their intellectual and transferable skills of initiative and responsibility. Students proactively manage the first stage of the development of their dissertation by forming conceptual ideas and related arguments and compile a research outline, research question and working, annotated bibliography to summarize both quantitatively and qualitatively the research they plan to undertake. The outline, question and working bibliography are formatively assessed and students are guided to amend, alter or adapt in order to ensure they have devised a viable and coherent research project. Such an approach will ensure that their completed dissertation forms a well evidenced and advanced piece of historical research that is both conceptually and structurally sound. Taught sessions help students to explore and understand the research methodologies and issues of presentation required for the production of a successful history dissertation. Through such workshops specific guidance is given with regard to appropriate research skills for the topics chosen. Students then have further individual tutorials spread across both semesters, in which allocated dissertation supervisors closely monitor and advise on the development of appropriate, distinctive, and critical arguments in respect of the chosen subject of study.

This module provides students with a critical study of the history of the Cold War ‘conflict’ between the US, the Soviet Union and their allies during the second half of the 20th century. Through a wide-ranging study, based on primary and secondary sources, the module will review the political, diplomatic and social manifestations of the Cold War. A specific element of the module will focus on students developing a chronological understanding of key events and appreciation of the geographical scope of the conflict. The historiographical debates that surround the origins and the end of the Cold War will be considered. Key features such as Soviet and U.S. foreign policy and ‘proxy wars’ will be examined. Key actors, episodes, events and crises will be addressed through an international lens encouraging students to take a global historical view. The module will also focus on a range of themes. The role and development of nuclear weapons will be considered, and other Cold War technology. Popular protest movements will also feature, such as CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). The exploration of Space and its impact will be another theme. The cultural Cold War will also be discussed, including examples such as music, film and sport. The module will consider relevant historiographical and methodological approaches, and students will learn how to apply these to the research and analysis of aspects of this period of history.

This module will build on (EDU50322) Vision to Reality and introduce you to a further range of contexts and settings for learning, examining these from the perspective of educators and learners, policy and practice. Throughout the module you will be encouraged to consider and appreciate the scope and limitations of education within a variety of teaching and learning environments and organisations. You will be introduced to a wider and more complex range of research and theory related to the benefits and limitations of teaching and learning in informal and alternative learning environments alongside the unique personal embodiment / impact of these on the overall experience of learners and educators. You will consider how pedagogical approaches are utilised in these contexts and how such contexts are positioned in contemporary educational policy. You will develop and apply skills of critical analysis in module sessions and independent learning. First hand experiences of different learning contexts through study visits and work with visiting experts will be threaded through the module as a basis for comparison, analysis, evaluation and reflection.

This module will provide you with skills and knowledge needed to design, conduct and report a substantial dissertation on a subject of interest to you and of relevance in the current context of education. You will gain an understanding of different methodological approaches and perspectives on educational research and be encouraged to articulate your own epistemologies and ontologies. Taught sessions will help to inform and scaffold the your planning process and provide a range of methods for sourcing, collecting, collating and analysing both primary (collected on placement) and/or secondary data in the construction of the written work. The module will ensure that your understanding of research ethics and integrity is embedded at all stages of your dissertation including gaining ethical clearance for primary research. Consideration is given to the potential positive ‘legacy’ of your research in practice. You will build on the research skills imparted earlier in your studies, at all levels, applying them in a more independent manner. The module will deepen and refine your knowledge of your specialist area and offer insights into the construction of longer pieces of analytical written work, and the way in which arguments are mediated in them. Opportunities to share and refine ideas at all stages will be supported by group work and supervisory tutorials. Links with university services offering additional expertise relevant to supporting your research skills and writing will be integrated and signposted in the module.

This module will explore the political history of the French and Haitian revolutions with a focus on the question of how far these revolutions represented the birth of ‘modernity’? In approaching the topic in this way, students will be encouraged to rethink the political ‘events’, personalities and ideas of the period and key economic, military, social and cultural changes in order to focus on the global significance of these revolutions and thus question more deeply the very concept of ‘modernity’. Students will utilise the latest scholarship on figures such as Robespierre, Toussaint Louverture and Napoleon and examine case studies from the Fall of the Bastille to the Haitian Declaration of Independence in order to engage with concepts such human rights, racial and gender identity, terrorism, warfare and political violence, as well as questions of individual liberty, slavery, representative government and the role of the nation state in modern society. Students on this module will learn and apply the latest historical methods and approaches to an area that has consistently been one of the most creative (and divisive) in terms of historical theory and in so doing will learn about the role of historiographic debate in driving progress in the historical profession. By the end of the module students will be able to understand and intervene in discussions about the meaning and legacy of two revolutions which are frequently said to stand at the gateway to the modern world.