• Year 1

• The programme provides a clear framework for study, designed to suit both professional practitioners and those interested in the scholarship of Education. Classes are either on campus supported through our Digital Learning Environment. All students take the core modules: Researching Education Practice in Context module (30 credits) and a dissertation (60 credits).Our specialist and optional modules are designed to allow you the opportunity to pursue your own areas of interest, supported by knowledgeable and research-active academics. All of our general MA Education modules run every year, but subject-specialist modules may be subject to demand and availability. Practice-related inquiry modules are a special feature of the programme where you negotiate a topic of study, supervised by one of the teaching team.

  Core modules

  • Researching Education Practice in Context (MAED701)

    This module aims to use and examine different approaches to researching education practices and promote understandings of the potential place and role of research in education settings. It critically explores the differentiated nature of education research, ways in which it might interact with professional practice and how professional educators can undertake effective and appropriate research in their own settings.

  • Masters of Arts in Education Dissertation (MAED702)

    Students must successfully complete a research proposal including ethical protocol and materials. Students engage on their own dissertation research projects appropriate to their programme of study. They receive supervisory support through formative assessment of three tasks prior to the proposal and during their research, wider reading and dissertation writing.

  • Thinking About Contemporary Education (MAED720)

    This module aims to critically examine the different ways in which we can make sense of educational practice. It encourages participants to conceptualise and develop theoretical frameworks with which to understand the contemporary issues in education that are of particular relevance to practitioners, thereby allowing them to critically and creatively challenge and improve their own practice.

  Optional modules

  • Practice Related Inquiry 2 (MAED718)

    This module affords students the opportunity to propose, formulate and undertake a self-contained Masters level study highly relevant to practice while learning about methods of inquiry. With content being agreed between student and tutor via the proposal form, they will undertake a structured programme of practice-related inquiry through tutorials, reading, short tasks and assignment writing.

  • Critical Perspectives on Inclusive Education, Disability and Diversity (MASE741)

    This module provides participants with an overview of SEN, inclusion and disability. Participants will have an opportunity to explore the key concepts and ideas relating to special and inclusive education. It will introduce participants to the main critical perspectives, issues and the debates which surround special education. Participants will draw on their own practice, and be able to relate theoretical perspectives to their practice contexts.

  • The Experience of Outdoor Learning (MASU753)

    This module discusses key concepts within outdoor learning as well as its connection with experiential learning and its value and potential from early years to adulthood. Consideration is given to the value that the natural environment has in education as well as to personal development and wellbeing. Participants are encouraged to deepen their own experience and critical thinking in relation to the subject as well as to the means by which they would like to develop their own practice.

  • Learning for Sustainability and Global Citizenship (MASU755)

    This innovative module uses an applied community engaged approach to look critically and creatively at notions of sustainability and global citizenship competencies, and the learning contexts and systems in which individuals, institutions and communities gain these competencies. This entails applying the UN Sustainable development Goals to real world projects that seek to address sustainability priorities in and around the city of Plymouth, enabling students to explore ideas of interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness, with a dynamic and experiential link between theory and practice. This inclusion of a service learning pedagogical approach enables consideration of the potential contribution of formal and non-formal education, whilst emphasising the links between our lives and those of people throughout the world. In so doing, it allows students to consider ways to actively contribute to a world in which power and resources for change leadership are more equitably shared.

  • Coaching and Mentoring in the Professional Context (MAED719)

    In recent years the development of self and staff has become an increasingly popular way to support professional development and career goals. This module critically examines the role that coaching and mentoring can play in this and aims to help participants gain the knowledge, skills and understanding to develop their role as a coach or mentor within the professional context. To facilitate this, participants will undertake coaching or mentoring interventions within their workplace or a simulated context and critically reflect upon the effectiveness of these.

Every postgraduate taught course has a detailed programme specification document describing the programme aims, the programme structure, the teaching and learning methods, the learning outcomes and the rules of assessment.

The following programme specification represents the latest programme structure and may be subject to change:

MA Education Programme Specification Sep 2023_5776