Opportunities and Challenges in Professional Education (X4920E)

15 credits, Level 6

Spring teaching

This module introduces you to the theoretical and conceptual approaches to the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It will encourage you to critically reflect on your learning. You’ll examine how different countries draw up their curricula, teach it and assess student learning.

You’ll explore pedagogical models originating from theories of learning within the UK, Europe and internationally. There will be sessions focussing on assessment, asking for your own experiences of being assessed at school and in higher education.  

You’ll then look more closely at how the curriculum is constructed, bringing in political economy, politics, culture and history. You’ll look at different curriculum models in upper, middle and low-income countries.

You’ll also take a critical look at alternative curricula for learning such as those in Montessori and Steiner schools, at Free Schools in the UK, and at Complementary Education Programmes for marginalised children in low-income countries.

You’ll examine who is included in the curriculum and who is excluded, in the UK and in low-income countries.

The module concludes by looking at global policy drivers for the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 128 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2020/21. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.