PRIMARY EDUCATION STUDIES

Education is a process, a subject and an academic discipline. This module aims to develop your awareness of all three and is designed to help you transition from previous experience and learning to undergraduate study. It provides you with essential skills to support you throughout your degree, including academic writing, presenting and collaborative working, as well as exploring all the elements that make education studies unique.

Children are born ready to learn, however it is the quality of a child's experiences in the first few years of life that can have a lasting impact on their ability to be mentally and physically healthy. The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. This module will therefore invite you to explore the factors, both internal to the child and environmental influences, that may contribute to supporting healthy brain and physical development. It acknowledges that the developing brain is open to influential experiences, both positive and negative, and will examine key issues, theories and debates related to the developing learner.

This module explores education in the UK, from early examples of formal schooling to the present day, to provide a context for historical and contemporary ideologies. It encourages you to take an analytical approach and enables you to challenge and critique educational policy, values and related provision. You will explore key themes such as societal impact, equality, special educational needs, the role of the state, social justice and economic influences while developing your ability to access, organise and evaluate information to develop coherent academic discussion.

This work experience module is designed to help you identify the ways teaching and learning can be organised in a range of settings. It will offer you the chance to select contrasting opportunities to enable you to evaluate how environment impacts on the educational experience of all involved.

How does policy influence pedagogy? What is the difference between a curriculum and a framework for learning? This module provides you with a chance to look at how different countries draw upon a range of theories in order to plan for learning for children aged 3 to 11. You will learn about the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and the National Curriculum for England in order to compare these with other examples from around the world. You will also begin to identify your own views on appropriate pedagogies for the primary age phase depending on subject and context.

In this module, you will develop your understanding of the importance of reflection to inform professional practice in a primary education context. You will explore contemporary theories of reflection, examining how these can be applied in order to provide insight for teaching and learning. You will be encouraged to explore personal beliefs and the potential impact of these on your own professional practice, and on the practice of others, in order to equip you with reflection as a professional competence. You will work collaboratively, through discussion and applied tasks, to evaluate research related to reflective practice, in order to develop your understanding of how teaching and learning can be effectively tailored to meet learner requirements.

This module focuses on the purpose and impact of primary education on wider society. It examines underlying educational ideologies and agendas, as well as the organisation and delivery of primary education, in both historical and modern-day contexts. Exploration of theory associated with the sociology of education will support you to consider if and how the primary education system, and its associated practices, have challenged or created inequalities in society. You will also have opportunities to critically evaluate alternative educational approaches.