Academic and Research Skills MACYS
- 60 credits
- All Year Teaching, Year 1 credits
This module provides a structured induction into a wide range of essential academic and research skills. You gain conceptual and practical experience in reading, analysing, designing and undertaking research throughout the module, culminating in the major project undertaken at the end of the course. Theory and practice are linked throughout, with sessions covering:
- the conventions of academic referencing approaches to reviewing the academic literature
- writing a research proposal
- different methodological positions
- specific research methods and research ethics.
The module aims to ensure a thorough understanding of the academic and research skills needed to undertake all aspects of the MA Childhood and Youth Studies course and there are opportunities to discuss the requirements of each assignment in depth.
Throughout the year there is an emphasis on collaborative group work, exchanging ideas, presenting work in progress and supporting each other through the different phases of writing and reading.
The course therefore provides a supportive framework within which you are encouraged to develop critical and reflexive understandings of your roles as both consumers and producers of research.
Current Developments in Childhood and Youth Policy and Practice
- 30 credits
- Autumn Semester, Year 1 credits
During this module you will interrogate contrasting policy assumptions about what constitutes a good childhood and about how best public policy and professional practice might secure and promote children's rights and well-being. The module curriculum will be organised around selected aspects of childhood and youth policy and practice in and beyond the UK. The rights framework provided by the UNCRC will be employed to structure enquiry. Case examples will be used to focus reading and discussion and these will be closely related to the research and professional practice interests of the student group. The module assessment is a 5,000 word case study. You will be required to negotiate a title that meets the generic learning requirements of the module whilst ensuring relevance to your personal and professional interests.
Introduction to Childhood and Youth Studies
- 30 credits
- Autumn Semester, Year 1 credits
This module introduces the field of study from the contrasting perspectives of a number of core disciplines that address the concepts of childhood and youth. Employing a life-span approach derived from developmental psychology and core preparatory readings, the module will present you with a range of disciplinary accounts that currently construct the social categories of 'childhood' and 'youth' within a comparative, cross-cultural frame of reference. These will include the view from law, social policy and social work, education, anthropology and sociology and medicine as well as psychology. Case studies will be used to ground discussion and analysis and enable you to make effective connections between theory and research and the policy and practice contexts in which they work or have a particular interest. The module assessment is two-fold. You will first submit a 1,000 word Review Paper one third of the way into the module for formative assessment and feedback only. On completion of the course a 4,000 word Long Term Paper will comprise the summative assessment. You will be required to negotiate titles in each case that meet the generic learning requirements of the course whilst ensuring relevance to your personal and professional interests.
Activist Media Practice
- 30 credits
- Spring Semester, Year 1 credits
Social movements have historically struggled to get their message reported clearly, accurately and effectively through the lens of mainstream media. This has lead to the rise of alternative media practices and strategies to break through or unsettle the corporate and state-run media systems around the world. In order to challenge hegemonic discourses, activist media seeks to circumvent and dismantle traditional media's communicative strategies either through a disruptive aesthetic or through a reconfigured mode of civic engagement. Whether through radical leaflets, pirate radio, graffiti, protest music, performance art, activist videos, political documentaries, or social media and the internet, today's media landscape has evolved into a range of complex transnational networks that can be activated by independent counter-hegemonic media practices and expressions.
This module asks you to learn about various forms of cultural resistance (through readings, screenings, lectures and discussions) in order to to formulate an effective form of activist media provocation. This piece of activist media may take the form of a video, a website, site-specific performance, series of photographs, media prank, etc. You will also be asked to write a reflective essay that contextualises the finished piece within the conceptual debates of the module.
Childhood and Youth in Global Perspective; Rights, Protection and Justice
- 30 credits
- Spring Semester, Year 1 credits
This module will explore legal and rights frameworks relating to children and young people with a particular emphasis on international conventions and perspectives. The first part of the module will involve an exploration of three areas of law: children's rights, child protection/welfare and youth justice/offending.
Explorations of these topics will include an examination of ideas of globalisation and post-colonial critiques where relevant. In the second part of the module case studies will be used to critically explore these issues in relation to practice with children and young people drawing upon examples from the developed and developing world.
An indicative list of practice topics for exploration includes:
- Children/young people and work
- Children and poverty
- Children and homelessness
- Children and criminal justice
- Children and refugee status
- Children and the family
The module will make connections between policy and practice approaches to children and youth in majority and minority worlds as well as linking themes such as migration, adoption and child trafficking. We will, however, pay particular attention to the specificities of work within a development context including an exploration of the practice issues asssociated with work in refugee camps and with street children.
Curriculum, learning and society
- 30 credits
- Spring Semester, Year 1 credits
The aim of this module is to study how the curriculum, learning, and society interrelate in low- and middle-income countries. It will engage with the major issues, concepts, and theories relating to curriculum development, pedagogy, and social inclusion in education. These will be related to policy and practice. It will address questions such as:
- What are the patterns of curriculum worldwide and how is curriculum reform being accomplished in different settings?
- To what extent are equity and social justice enacted through the curriculum and how might this be furthered?
- What are the processes of curriculum development and what power do teachers and other stakeholders have in deciding what knowledge is included?
- What do different definitions of educational quality say about what is valued in education?
- What pedagogies are espoused and practiced in low- and middle-income countries and how appropriate are these for different kinds of learners?
- What are the pedagogical and social effects of different systems and practices of assessment?
- How are instructional materials incorporated in educational practice at national and local level?
- How does the curriculum relate to local and global cultures and teacher and learner identities?
The module will engage with these questions at various levels, including especially a study of how macro issues are played out in the micro/meso contexts of classrooms and other educational institutions.
Foundations of Education Policy, Planning and Development
- 30 credits
- Spring Semester, Year 1 credits
The changing roles of government in relation to education services have multiple implications for stakeholders in education. This module explores approaches to educational planning and policy issues, and considers the implications of contemporary governance concerns associated with designing and implementing educational reform.
You will gain practical experience in developing education strategies aimed at achieving education and development targets. The module pays particular attention to the various dimensions of the changes in the governance of education.
The module considers key aspects of policy and planning covering the changing international agenda regarding good governance:
- the changes to educational planning and reforms aimed at ensuring sustainable financing
- the role of NGOs and communities in designing and implementing change
- reforms and governance of education paying attention to decentralisation and its impact on how schools are managed and function
- and approaches to monitoring and evaluating education interventions and programmes.
Teachers: policy and practice in lnternational contexts
- 30 credits
- Spring Semester, Year 1 credits
The module focuses on how teacher education can be organised to best enable teachers to improve their practice. In addressing this, it is necessary to consider how teachers learn to teach. The importance of the teacher to the teaching/learning process has never been in doubt and yet it is only relatively recently that the spotlight has been put on teachers, rather than on pupils, to examine the ways in which teachers learn and the theories and motivations that underpin their practice. Understanding how teachers learn to teach and how best to facilitate their learning are crucial issues to consider when designing policies to improve education in developing countries.
The aim of the seminars in the first part of the term is to give you a broad overview of some of the major issues, concepts and theories in teacher education and how they relate to practice. In the second part the module looks at contemporary issues related to culture and teacher development, teacher mobility, teacher motivation, supervision and mentoring, and teacher education by distance including the use of ICTs. These are all considered in the context of a variety of developing countries, and include consideration of the role of international aid in shaping the practice of teacher education.
The Global Governance of Education and Conflict
- 30 credits
- Spring Semester, Year 1 credits
The module seeks to critically examine cutting-edge issues related to educational governance, policy-making and planning in low- and middle-income contexts. Each academic year three or four key issues will be selected, based on current developments in the field of education and international development.
Issues such as the global governance of education in conflict-affected states, public-private partnerships in education, governing teachers, and NGOs and the global governance of education will be selected and taught as a block of two to three sessions. Each block will provide participants with a comprehensive reading list on the topic, discussion and debate on the core questions raised by the selected issue, and a possible final essay question that participants can select.