Course summary

Are you a professional practitioner working in an educational setting? Are you curious about the teaching process, with a determination to understand and adapt your work to new challenges and different landscapes in education? Are you critical about the intersections between policy and practice? Are you ready to meet others who share your commitment and critical engagement with educational ideas? We hope that our MA in Education will excite and challenge you in equal measure. If you are a graduate working in education and looking for academic and professional development and experience in research education, this could be the course for you. It is flexible, part-time, and is designed to be suitable for busy professionals. You can aim for the full MA degree (180 credits) from the start or begin with the smaller Postgraduate Certificate (60 credits) and stop there or build credits on afterwards towards the MA. You may already have some credits (e.g. from a PGCE or a CPD course) which you may be able to use towards the MA, subject to certain conditions. Throughout your studies you will be questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about evidence-based practice, exploring the implications for alternatives and sharing the results of your research in order to influence professional practice. Our students are work-based learners who include Head Teachers, NQTs and RQTs from school settings. We have also had students who are Drama Practitioners, Musicians, Artists, Social Workers, FE Lecturers and work-based trainers in the industry. The essential criterion is that your work involves educational intervention and assessment in broad terms. All of our MA students are work-based in a variety of settings (some international) with most working as teachers or supporting learning in other ways. The work-based aspect of this course provides a unique chance for you to understand and improve education in your own work setting with every piece of work centred around your own area of interest. Most students on the MA in Education course attend three weekends of study a year which culminate in a dissertation. Many graduates of this course have found their career progression enhanced as a direct or indirect result of following this course. More significantly, they have been directly in involved in research education and developed these skills professionally in an educational context. Through the building of systematic enquiry skills and incisive critical engagement with educational issues, graduates of the MA in Education have demonstrated that they have enhanced their practice and made a direct impact on their schools as learning communities. Completing the MA Education can open the door to study for a PhD or professional doctorate such as the EdD, both of which can be studied here at BGU. Some graduates move on to teaching positions in higher education or to leadership positions within an educational organisation. Find out more: https://www.bishopg.ac.uk/courses/maeducation