Education (Taught)

What is special about this course?

Are you an education professional wishing to take the next step towards becoming an expert practitioner, deepening your practice-based knowledge and understanding through reflexive professional development and enquiry? Perhaps you're a leader seeking to develop the strategic and transformational skills needed to help your team thrive through challenge, change, and reform, or maybe you're a practitioner working in a remote, rural, or northern context, where innovative and bespoke approaches are essential to enabling learners, schools, and communities to flourish?

Our flexible, 3-year MEd Education is a unique part-time online route for working educationalists with a broad range of interests and professional development aspirations. The course enables you to shape your learning by focusing on areas that align with your professional interests and responsibilities. Choose to study from a wide portfolio, from practitioner enquiry, leadership, and situational pedagogies to teacher identity, communities of practice, sustainability, inclusion, mental health and wellbeing in education. Build your confidence in reflexive practice and actively engage with educational theory, research, policy and complex issues that matter in your day-to-day work.

Begin by deepening your understanding and insight as an educator, following the general pathway where you select from a broad range of modules and research approaches and undertake a dissertation using methods beyond practitioner enquiry. Alternatively, you may wish to pursue a qualification that highlights your knowledge and interest in a focused area of practice, choosing one of our specialist pathways in:

◾Rural education

◾Learning for sustainability

◾Health and wellbeing

◾Leadership and management

◾International contexts

Learn through collaboration with peers who bring diverse perspectives from across education. Take part in activities that strengthen your professional voice, support meaningful dialogue, and develop critical enquiry skills that directly inform and develop your practice. Choose the focus of your work in each module, so learning stays relevant and immediately applicable to you, whilst working with others on the programme to explore practice-based challenges and create thoughtful, innovative responses to genuine professional issues.

Join our MEd Education and let us support you in building on your existing expertise and further extending your impact as an established education professional.

*Please note: this programme does not lead to a teaching qualification in Scotland. For courses that enable you to pursue primary or secondary teaching in Scotland, please see our list of PGDE courses

Please view our website for further details on the Special Features and study duration.

Module outline

PgCert

You will study the following modules:

• Collaborative enquiry

• Introduction to critical enquiry

• School-based research approaches

PgDip

There are 6 potential pathways available, as indicated below.

General Education pathway
Semester 1
You will choose 1 of the following modules:

• Building resilience: understanding the impact of aces

• Critical reflection for middle leadership*

• Identity, agency and communities of practice

• Qualitative research and data analysis

• Sustainability education

• Teaching and learning in tertiary and higher education

• The global child

*GTCS registration required, not available to international students. Mandatory for those wishing to study Enacting Middle Leadership in semester 3

Semester 2
You will choose 1 of the following modules (students choosing ‘Enacting middle leadership’ in semester 3 will not select a module for semester 2):

• Article 12: enabling participation and leadership

• Disability and society (level 10)

• Qualitative inquiry

• Rural education

• Sustainable creative endeavour in contemporary society

• Theory and practice of e-learning

Semester 3
You will choose 1 of the following modules:

• Alternative pedagogies

• Enacting middle leadership (double module)*

• Mental health in education

*GTCS registration required, not available to international students. You must also have completed Critical reflection for middle leadership in semester 1

Health and wellbeing pathway
You will study the following modules:

Semester 1

• Building resilience: understanding the impact of ACEs

Semester 2

• Disability and society (level 10)

Semester 3

• Mental health in education

International contexts pathway
You will study the following modules:

Semester 1

• The global child

Semester 2 – one of the following:

• Article 12: enabling participation and leadership

• Rural education

Semester 3

• Alternative pedagogies

Leadership and management pathway
You will study the following modules:

Semester 1

• Critical reflection for middle leadership*

Semesters 2 and 3 – one of the following:

• Enacting middle leadership*

*GTCS registration required, not available to international students

Learning for sustainability pathway
You will study the following modules:

Semester 1

• Sustainability education

Semester 2 – one of the following:

• Article 12: enabling participation and leadership

• Rural education

• Sustainable creative endeavour in contemporary society

Semester 3

• Alternative Pedagogies

Rural education pathway
You will study the following modules:

Semester 1

• Identity, agency and communities of practice

Semester 2

• Rural education

Semester 3

• Alternative pedagogies

MEd

You will study the following modules:

• Dissertation (education and enquiry)

• Preparation for educational research and enquiry

This outline reflects the modules as currently delivered and is subject to change.