Education (Early Years) MA

This course aims to further develop your professional knowledge, understandings in Early Years Education and Care, applicable to a wide range of practice-based settings.

For all students this will require you to undertake observations in work-place practice, and advice and support from tutors will be provided to facilitate assessment and learning on the course.

You will study with other professionals from a range of educational organisations including schools, local authority organisations, the lifelong learning sector and universities.

The course is available for part time study, giving students access to a range of optional units with broad themes that allows individuals to focus on specific areas of study within the units in order to personalise these appropriate to their interests and needs. In this way you will be able to make a deeper, more specialist analysis in one particular core theme, or appropriate to one area of your own practice or experience.

Alongside the taught units, you will study Research Methods in the workplace in preparation for your dissertation.

The MA Education (Early Years) aims to:

• Increase awareness of and access to a range of academic ideas and research findings in early years, to promote evidence-based practice
• Promote personalisation of broad themes to meet the needs and interests of early years students while providing a focused line of study
• Promote vocationally relevant and varied assessment formats with a negotiated focus to support individual and organisational needs in an early years context
• Promote engagement with key issues in education, involving critical examination of a wide range of key education sources and texts, leading to the identification and justification of recommendations for further action

How will I be assessed?

You will complete a range of assessments, many of which you can tailor to your existing or developing interests and experience.

You will do a number of oral presentations, which not only improve your ability to present information in a professional and coherent way but also enable the sharing of research and experience amongst the group.

Written assessments include portfolios, case studies, essays and literature reviews.

You will develop your research skills throughout the course and apply them to a final applied project or dissertation.

Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree at Honours level, or equivalent. We will also consider candidates with other relevant qualifications or appropriate work experience.