Course summary

This course aims to further develop professional knowledge and understanding in specific areas of educational practice, applicable to a wide range of practice-based settings. You will study with other professionals from a range of educational organisations including schools, local authority organisations, the lifelong learning sector and universities. The course is part-time and alongside the recommended units/pathway, there are a range of optional units with broad themes allowing you to focus on one area of study within the units in order to personalise these appropriate to your interests and needs. In this way, you will be able to make a deeper, more specialist analysis in one particular core theme, or appropriate to one area of your own practice or experience. Alongside the taught units, you will study research methods in preparation for your dissertation (or you will take the Applied research methods and project unit if you enter the programme with 60 credits at level 7). The MA Education (Practice) aims to:

• Increase awareness of and access to a range of ideas and research findings in Educational topics

• Promote personalisation of broad themes to meet the needs and interests of students while providing a focused line of study

• Promote vocationally relevant and varied assessment formats with a negotiated focus to support individual and organisational needs (as applicable to different situations)

• Promote engagement with key issues in education, involving critical examination of a wide range of key education sources and texts, leading to the identification and justification of recommendations for further action.

• As applicable to context, encourage evidence-based practice or practice-based understandings

• The aim of this part-time MA in Education (Practice) is to enhance your knowledge, skills and understanding of educational practice. This course does not expect you to confine your study to one particular area, but instead, look at how different elements of education combine to influence and inform practice.

• The focus is on exploring your practice and developing this further through considering the impact of changes you might make in your workplace setting

• As you progress through the course you will be developing your understandings and skills in relation to the research that informs educational policy and practice. The dissertation will allow you to focus on a particular topic of interest or area for development in your work.

• Studying this course will enable you to apply your own area of interest or practice to specific areas of study and to develop in the direction which interests you. You will be able to learn through a variety of ways including workshops, seminars, online learning, and tutorial support.

• As part-time students, this blended learning course will allow you to work around your work commitments with a combination of face-to-face sessions as well as online support and activities.