Early Years Education (MA)

This masters degree will:

• look at challenging issues relevant to early years education
• develop your skills in assessing the quality of early years practice
• engage with current understandings of teaching and learning
• increase your understanding of policy development
• draw your attention to recent debates and issues
• develop your early years leadership knowledge and skills
• enable you to conduct research in early years settings.

Features

This masters degree provides the opportunity to:

• access professional development that is informed by best practice in early years education
• prepare for leadership roles
• develop your understanding of general methodology and research methods.

Who is this programme for?

Students of early childhood and educators in the UK and internationally, including early years teachers and professionals, FE and HE lecturers, nursery nurses, voluntary and independent providers, advisers and leaders working in areas relevant to early childhood.

Entry requirements

A good first degree or equivalent in a relevant subject. Appropriate experience of work with young children is desirable.

Core topics

• Teaching, learning and assessment in the early years
• Early years curriculum
• Play in the early years
• Oracy and literacy development
• Understanding diversity
• Contemporary issues in early years education
• Education research.

Related topics

• Leading policy and practice for early childhood services
• Improving early childhood through interventions
• Theories of childhood and children's rights.

How are you assessed?

By coursework assignments and a 20,000-word dissertation.

Attendance

Face-to-face evening sessions.

Where do our students go?

Graduates of this masters degree are currently working as:

• advisers to local and national government
• preschool senior leaders
• further and higher education tutors.

More information

Watch Farangis Mardonova, from Tajikistan, talk about her experience of being a student on this programme: (video) Mac low | Mac normal | PC low | PC normal

The importance of early childhood education; Watch Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Professor of Early Childhood Education, in conversation with doctoral student Denise Kingston. (video)

For more information please see the programme leaflet (pdf, 0.1mb).

 

Core modules

• Early Childhood Education
• Management And Contemporary Issues In Early Years Education
• Research Methods in Education

Recommended modules

• Leading Policy And Practice For Early Childhood Services
• The Multilingual Classroom
• Theories of Childhood and Children's Rights