Studying our Education Studies and English BA (Hons) course will provide you with a firm knowledge of key educational theories and ideas, language and English literature. If you are passionate about working with children, young people and families, our unit in the Narratives of Childhood will allow you to consider children’s educational experiences, including through the effect of the digital age. The course also offers a range of optional units in education including The Lifelong Curriculum unit that will not only teach you to design curriculum, but how to implement it based on educational policy. You will keep this knowledge in mind during our Developing Teaching Practice unit, where you will learn to deliver effective classroom sessions based on research in the field. This ties closely into our Comparative Education unit, where you will adopt a diverse approach to analysing the issues and problems affecting international education. As an English student, you will also be introduced to a range of literary genres and theoretical approaches including poetry, drama and fiction in our Approaching Literature unit while exploring a range of theoretical approaches to these texts. Similarly, you will learn How Talk Works and How Text Works by focusing on the rules of conversation, its patterns and norms, and how it varies between people and situations.  

You will do the same with the written word by exploring the different ways texts are produced, its purposes and meanings to help build your language interpretation skills. Furthermore, you will build on the skills and knowledge from Approaching Literature in our Radical Change in the Long Nineteenth Century unit where you’ll discover how literature has contributed to ideas around religion, gender, science and the arts in the long nineteenth century. Another relevant area of English study includes our The Play’s the Thing unit where you will consider plays from ancient Greece through to the twenty-first century to gain an in-depth knowledge of the philosophical, cultural and political conditions that inform English drama. You could also choose to examine literature and theory from the early twentieth century through to the postmodern era of the latter half of the century in our Modern and Postmodern Literary Practices unit. In more specific areas of literature, the course offers a range of optional units including Gothic Literature and World Literature: Crossing Borders. Another key skill as an educational professional is writing, and this is where our Creative Writing unit will introduce you to writing short stories and poetry that you will share in small group workshops. You’ll also be able to experience the excitement of working in an archive with our Research in Action unit where you’ll have the opportunity to learn about publishing, book history, and the development of reading material for young children.  

Our Children’s and Young Adult Fiction unit will familiarise you with a range of fictional genres written for children, including film adaptations, fairy tales, and other popular fiction. You can also engage in critical language study in our Discourse and Ideology unit; analyse accepted norms in education and pedagogy in our Deschooling unit; or consider the economic and cultural factors shaping family experience in our Families and Communities unit. Aside from this, you will be able to debate and investigate the role of the media and political institutions in education in our Contemporary Debates in Education, Childhood and Youth unit. There is also an opportunity for philosophical study where you will be able to learn about a range of philosophical concepts and methods in education in our Introduction to Educational Philosophy unit while also exploring the relationship between the two in our Reading Philosophy and Education unit. In areas of the mind, you will also discuss developmental psychology in our Early Childhood Psychology unit while examining how this impacts learning and how to utilise this within educational settings.  

With more young people experiencing mental health issues, our unit in Children and Young People’s Wellbeing will teach you to support children through understanding social and emotional issues in education. Similarly, you will focus on how behaviour is understood within educational contexts in our Perspectives on Pedagogy and Behaviour unit. In the same field, our unit in Representations of Disability will allow you to criticise disability representation in the media and how this influences its perceptions. In Investigating the Social World, you’ll develop an understanding of quantitative and qualitative research methods, data collection, analysis and reporting, research skills which will be of great use when you complete your Dissertation where you will have the option to complete either a research dissertation or a creative writing project.