Here's part II of my Year 1 Academic Review! You can view my Psychology one here.
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This essentially means that I only take 30 credits (out of 120) worth of Education Studies modules per a year (with the exception of Year 3 where I will get a choice of whether to take an additional Education or Psychology module or a module from another department).
This year both were compulsory foundational modules.
Theories of Learning
Contact hours: 3hrs per a week (Term 1 only)
Assessment: Essay assignment
This covered key theorists' theories and perspectives of how we learn from early years up to adulthood.
- Behaviourism - its historical emergence, theories of conditioning and Behaviourist theorists; application to different stages of learning.
- Cognitivism - how it differs from Behaviourism, cognitive development (incl. Piaget), Constructivism, adaptation in relation to learning.
- Social Constructionism - constructivism vs. contructionism, Vygotsky and the role of the teacher', social relationships and environment, language development; problem solving.
- Social Learning Theory - Bandura and Bronfenbrenner; importance to factors external to school/ individual's immediate circle.
- Psychoanalysis - Freud's stages of psychosexual development, the Iceberg Analogy, personality, and emotions.
- Humanism - Montessori education, Maslow's Motivational Model, Rogers.
- Contemporary Theories of Learning - adult vs. child learning, barriers to learning, influence of adult education, the propose of education, Expansive Learning; key skills developed in contemporary education.
We looked into so many theorists so I didn't want to include them all, but this should be enough to give you a gist of the kind of content that was covered. Each week, we also discussed and evaluated the issues of each theory, how they can apply to different stage of learning, and reflected on our own learning experience in relation to these different theories.
Education Today
Contact hours: 3hrs per a week (Term 2 only)
Assessment: 2hr Exam (essay based)
Looks at what education means and its role in contemporary society.
- Sociological Introduction to Education - philosophical questions surrounding education and roles within it, socio-cultural contexts and social mobility, the concept of meritocracy and a little on politics.
- The Structure of the Education System (focusing on the UK) - government aims, educational policies and current ideologies, educational documents, and global competition.
Pixabay - School Curricula - what the curriculum consists of, how they can be perceived, different types of curricula (e.g.: hidden and formal curricula), their purpose and how they reflect policies, and challenging multi-cultural representations within the national curriculum.
- Assessment - the difference between formative and summative assessment, meeting standards vs. learning, styles of assessment, reliability and validity of assessments, and debates surrounding the idea of meritocracy.
- Assess and inclusion - SEND and education, how access and inclusion is perceived and how that affects the practise of it, the effects of labelling, the educational environment, the 4 Areas of SEND as stated by the Department of Education, and the medical vs. social model of disability.
- Religious Education -the concept of religion, stages of religious and moral development, content prioritisation, the propose and role of RE; the concept of British values in education.
- Economics and Education - introduction of areas of economics, history of the economic climate, marketisation, globalisation, neo-liberalism, and the privatisation of education.
- Intersectionality - I'm not going to lie, I don't know what happened with this lecture. I think what was supposed to be explored was how the combination of different forms of prejudice and discrimination (e.g.: gender and ethnicity) or biases affect educational experiences? Again, I'm not to sure.
- Social Justice - we looked at the diverse range of school types that exist, considered why we need so many different types, their historical and political developments, autonomy, parentocracy, focused on the increase of academies, free schools, and grammar schools and its effect on autonomy and parentocracy, and admissions criteria.
Before I go ahead, I want you to know that this review doesn't represent CES (Centre for Education Studies) as a whole.
Remember that this is only 25% of my degree and it's new for them to be working with another department as this is a new course which was introduced this year. Therefore, there are going to be issues which do need to (and will) be addressed. Those on the BA Education Studies degree will have a very different perspective.
Assessment and Feedback
- One of the main differences between Education Studies and Psychology is that in Psychology I felt that I had the opportunity to make mistakes and be able to learn from them. This was something that I mentioned in last week's post. However, the Education Studies modules are assessed by 100% through either an essay assignment OR an exam (also essay based). This means that if I screw up, then that's that. I would not get another opportunity. I have (literally) failed a few psychology assignments, but as modules were not 100% assessed through one piece of work, I was given the chance to learn from those errors and redeem myself.
- What made this even more stressful was that I had not received enough individual formative feedback to make sure that I was understanding the information and doing the correct research to meet the expectations of the department. The only feedback of this kind I received was from the (summative) Theories of Learning assignment, but that module was very much psychology based anyway. Although seminars/ group work within seminars count as formative feedback in the department, without receiving feedback from physical pieces of properly written work, it's hard to tell whether we were meeting the level of written communication required in the department. Considering that all work that we submit towards out degree are essays, this is quite important. Even submitting one paragraph here and there would have made a difference.
- For this reason, I still don't know how to write and structure a good degree level social studies essay. I haven't been able to explore different writing styles to see which one works best. It's all very much trial and error, and the way I write in Psychology doesn't work well for Education Studies.
- Nevertheless, feedback that I did receive from the assignment (it was the first ever essay I wrote for uni!) was very detailed and clear and it gave me an idea of general things to be cautious of when writing academic essays.
- Consistent criteria set by the department when it comes to marking work. This is split up into several sections. Again, it would have been helpful if I had more pieces of work to make comparisons against and to be able to figure out more clearly where my strengths and weaknesses lie.Structure of Year 1
- Learning objectives could have been clearer in the 2nd module. I didn't firmly know what I was supposed to understand and delve further into until the revision lecture. To be fair, this is kind of my fault for only realising this until Easter break as I was revising. Having the revision lecture pointers as the learning objectives would have helped immensely as they were really informative.
- Only covered the very minimal - wasn't made aware of how much extra reading I had to do. I didn't do anywhere near as much as I was supposed to and didn't realise until the revision lecture in Term 3... Having to cram in and rely on.
- Timing issues in the organisation of the lectures/ seminars. It happens. The only problem was that lectures over-ran into the afternoon seminar, or we would spend way too long on one PowerPoint slide. Sometimes I couldn't quite work out whether I was in a seminar or lecture.
- Like Psychology did, this year gave us a really broad outline of various areas of education studies.
- As a result, we were able to discuss and debate a broad range of issues facing education from a range of perspectives. These were quite thought-provoking.
- Covered the whole spectrum from early years to adult education.
- Not a criticism but I am a little sad that I didn't get the chance to explore some other year 1 modules like the 'Creativity, Culture, and Learning one!
Other General Comments - There are feedback forms at the end of each module which we fill out on-line. Unlike with Psychology, I don't know much about what happens with these, but perhaps it is discussed with home department students.
- Each module is made up of 3 hours of contact hours a week. CES tends to arrange this so that that all 3 hours are completed on the same day, and sometimes in a 3-hour block. There are a few which are split up into different days but the majority of them are all in one day. I suppose you just get it over and done with, so for some people this is convenient. Personally, I like to be able to go away for a few days and consolidate what I already know for the next lecture otherwise everything becomes a bit mushy in my brain. Therefore, this doesn't work too well for me. It all depends on how you work through your work best.
- There tended to be quite a lot of 'in your lecture with x' or 'in x module' comments as there are bound to be overlaps. However, when this did happen, us Psychology students kind of sat there and just looked at each other because we had no idea what they were on about. A brief overview would have been nice.
- Whilst there were a lot of group discussions taking place, I did find that there was a segregation between CES and Psychology students. It would have been nice to engage with the CES students more and get to know them as they all seem like really friendly people.
- Lecturers are friendly and are genuinely interested in what they teach. It shows clearly in the way they speak in their presentations.
- Book recommendations are provided after every lecture.
- In 'Education Today' we were taught by a range of academics alongside our main two. This allowed us to gain knowledge from someone who specialised in that area and get a good insight into the content of 2nd and 3rd year module options. It was also nice to be able to meet some of the other academics of CES.
I definitely believe that if I was taking the BA Education Studies course alone, this review would be very different. Some of these points will be inevitable if you take a joint degree course. As I have already mentioned, this is a new course this year, so adaptations will need to be made.
I'm not sure where I stand with Education Studies as of yet. The plan is to think it through, possibly speak to a few academics in CES, and see what happens with timetabling and module choices.
HOWEVER, if I do choose to continue with Education Studies, I'm looking very forward to Year 2 and 3 modules. A lot of them sound so interesting, and I think that I will enjoy them a lot more (that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the content this year). It will be great to be able to have a clearer focus and study those aspects of Education which we have a personal interest in.
That's my 1st Year academic review complete!
I'm not going to do a social one as I'm still working on that (nothing to be ashamed of 😅), but there will be an accommodation one up sometime in Term 1! I thought that it would be good to do a comparison of student accommodation vs off campus housing.
Ummm... Not really sure how to sign this off (commence flashbacks to every essay written).
I guess I'm just going to say bye 👋 (unless you're off to check out some of my other posts, then enjoy!), and hope you have a good weekend.
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