• SEND in Context

  Understand the entitlement context for children and young adults with SEND aged up to 25 years. View this against the backdrop of legislative change and evolving models, as well as global perspectives on ‘need’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘personalisation’. Alongside rights, explore the duties, procedures and principles for practice expected from those working in this field to improve quality of life and aspirations. Be clear on the implications of mandates for collaborative working and providing planning that’s centred on an individual. To help grow your general understanding, you’ll look at case studies of children with special education needs and disabilities. This will cover a number of conditions. All viewed from a range of professional perspectives.

• Intervention for SEND

  Focus on specific needs and conditions, as well as intervening to include stakeholders, supported by the principle of equality of opportunity. Consider the tension between identifying need and the philosophy of inclusion. Understand the implications of ‘Quality First Teaching’ within new frameworks and for helping young people up to 25 years of age live life in their communities. To help with this module’s objectives, you’ll explore a range of needs, including communication and interaction; cognition and learning; emotional, social and mental health; and sensory and physical requirements. You’ll consider the implications for children and young people with specific conditions, for example ADHD, autism and dyslexia. You’ll critically assess what such conditions mean to families too, and approaches to intervention. And you’ll appraise working practices for one good reason: the best solutions will mean engaging every relevant stakeholder, building on partnership strengths.

• Educational and Social Research Methods

  This module provides you with the opportunity to consider the aims and intentions of educational research, critique published journal articles, and examine the role of evidence from research as a basis for improving education and social care. You will gain grounding in educational research issues, methods and strategies together with knowledge of how to match intended outcomes with specific educational questions and methods of investigation.

• Postgraduate Major Project (double module)

  The Major Project is central to achieving your MA. You’ll show how you’re able to combine learning from previous modules. This learning will give you the basis for planning, conducting and writing up a research or work-based project. This module is also the opportunity to demonstrate your ability to raise significant and meaningful questions in relation to your chosen topic, alongside a critical understanding of research methods and their relationship to knowledge. You’ll be well placed to develop solutions to ethical dilemmas likely to arise in your research or professional practice and to expand existing knowledge, contributing to the development of best practice.

If you start your course in September, you will take the following module

• National and International Policy Perspectives

  Policy has a central place in all phases of education at macro, meso and micro levels. Students taking this module will have the opportunity to explore aspects of policy in depth, considering the ideologies, values and evidence that inform policy and the position of individuals and groups when responding to and implementing policy. MA Education and MA Early Childhood Education students take this module together as some global and national policy initiatives have an impact across all sectors and policy developments in one part of the educational system are likely to affect others. Students are expected to be active learners, engaging in group discussion and group presentations in order to share their ideas about both theory and practice.

If you start your course in January, you will take the following module

• Specialist Studies in Learning and Teaching

  This module is designed to enable students to explore a subject that is relevant to their role as a teacher in compulsory or post compulsory education. Students will be required to focus on one of the specialist areas provided by the course team and to work with other students to successfully achieve the learning outcomes. Students will choose from a range of subject specialisms which will include but not necessarily be limited to: Developing Assessment for Learning in the classroom context; Enhancing learning and teaching using learning technologies; Supporting students with Special Educational Needs; Outdoor Learning; Critical Education and Social Justice. This module may be used as a vehicle to offer an agreed specialist subject for continuing professional development purposes, for example, if a group of teachers in a school wanted to pursue a particular topic to link with a particular issue. In some circumstances this Specialist Studies in Learning and Teaching module could be replaced by the Professional Enquiry module for example, if a group of teachers wished to pursue an action research project in a school context.