Awarded by Birmingham City University
The Master of Arts in Education will give students a foundation for a career in many different educational settings, both public and private. This programme provides a comprehensive international overview of teaching, learning and educational systems.
Students will develop important transferable skills in scholarly studies, research skills and practice. These will prove useful when students find themselves working as part of a team, or having to handle lots of data.
The master’s programme within this framework aims to prepare students to become a creative, confident, technologically-competent and forward-looking individual who has developed the skills of research, reflection and critical evaluation and is aware of the local, national and global themes, issues, policies, ideology and philosophy that affect professional practise within the chosen field.
The development of autonomous professionals is central and participants should be in a position to analyse, synthesise and evaluate information from diverse sources in order to inform their professional development. They should also be able to evaluate critically current research and advanced scholarship in their discipline and be able to evaluate methodologies and develop critiques of them and, where appropriate, propose new hypotheses. These programmes provide a safe space where students can engage in critical academic enquiry and risk-taking.
In addition to this, students will develop the qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility, decision-making in complex and unpredictable situations, the ability to deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively, make sound judgements in the absence of incomplete data, and communicate their conclusions clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences.
Requirement for Award
The programme structure enables participants to work towards the award of an MA through the accumulation of credits over a period of time. A staged series of exit awards ensure that an award is provided should participants decide not to complete the programme. This is achieved in the following way:
a Postgraduate Certificate which requires the successful completion of 60 credits
a Postgraduate Diploma, which requires the successful completion of 120 credits
a Masters of Arts award which requires the successful completion of 180 credits.
Students who successfully complete the Core modules and 4 modules from the framework up to a maximum of 80 credits and the Dissertation will be entitled to the award of a Masters award. For a named award at least two-thirds of credits gained from modules directly related to the specialist focus and the dissertation must also relate to the subject area of the named award. Named awards include: The award of:
Masters of Arts in Education (MA Education)
In addition to the generic MA Education, there are a number of named routes:
MA Education (Childhood Studies)
MA Education (Early Years Leadership)
Delivery Mode and Assessment
The course is delivered through a variety of engaging, interactive and hands-on modes, which include face-to-face sessions, small, group discussions, directed tasks/individual study. Students will be given university’s access to Moodle virtual learning environment. Students will be able to access a wide range of e-books and journals.
Note: All learning materials and resources will only be available online in the Student Portal's Learning Resource.
