Teacher Education (Taught)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2024). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

This is a professional development course for new and experienced teacher educators involved in pre-service and in-service education who are interested in increasing their knowledge and skills base required for effective and inspirational teacher education whilst ‘on the job’.

This two-year, part-time course is a world first, bringing together teacher educators in the UK, EU and internationally and provides an Oxford University master's-level qualification for anyone involved in pre-service and in-service teacher education:

• school-based teacher educators, coaches and mentors

• university tutors involved in teacher education, such as university tutors on taught education programmes or based in university subject departments with some teacher education responsibilities

• advisory teachers and fieldworkers

• professional development providers.

The course focuses on developing teacher educators’ day-to-day practice as well as developing areas such as the design and teaching of teacher education programmes, the ability to conduct research to develop practice, and the ability to participate in debates about teaching and teacher education in your own subject. It is designed to be integral to the your day-to-day practice as a teacher educator and blends online, distance learning with one-week residential components in Oxford in years one and two.

The three distance online units comprise investigations focused on your own practice and tasks that involve individual and group work. For example, you will participate in an inquiry task where you will observe and interview your learner teachers (beginning or experienced teachers) in order to learn more about the knowledge and beliefs they bring to teacher education. This is then brought together with key literature and you will share the findings from your inquiry task with your study group for further discussion and analysis. These tasks also contribute significantly to the work for each unit’s assignment.

You will be expected to participate in a course of instruction for six terms on a part-time basis. This will include two, one-week residential sessions in Oxford, and a series of online lectures and seminars. At the beginning of Hilary Term on the first Saturday there will be an optional day’s induction to Unit 2. Students can attend in-person or remotely via Teams. A similar day is held on a Saturday at the beginning of Trinity Term in April for induction into Unit 3 and again, students can attend in person or remotely via Teams.

The University’s Virtual Learning Environment is used to support the work on each task and sustain critical discussion.

Research in the department is organised around three major themes:

• Language, Cognition and Development

• Policy, Economy, and Society

• Pedagogy, Learning and Knowledge.

Within each of these themes there are several research groups and centres. All staff and doctoral students belong to one or more of these research groups, each of which has its own seminar programme to which graduate students often contribute. In addition, the department as a whole sponsors regular seminars and public lectures which attract distinguished national and international speakers.