Explore our Professional Education taught Master's degree.

P-X3AS

MA

20 months part-time

January 2023

Centre for Teacher Education (CTE)

Online

This is an MA Education for ambitious teachers, mentors and leaders working in professional contexts within Primary, Secondary and Further Education. We encourage you to be curious about what works in education and why, to be creative in your approach to researching as a practitioner, and to have high expectations about the impact your research might have in your classroom and more widely.

Upon enrolment, the first half of the academic credit recognised towards our Master's in Professional Education will either be drawn from a recent UK PGCE with teaching practice or from our Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Education Programme. All Masters pathways then share the same ‘taught’ MA course structure, although this is tailored towards your research interests and objectives.

The step-by-step module process takes teachers through designing a research study, applying for ethical approval and conducting the study over an appropriate time-period. The final assessment is a dissertation which communicates the findings of the substantial research project in an appropriate academic form; preparing teachers to share the research more widely with other practitioner researchers, colleagues and the wider profession.

Our online delivery allows for the flexibility teachers need whilst working, supporting them to study from anywhere within the UK, or internationally, thanks to our high-quality online materials and tutorials and many teaching sessions delivered remotely. Course timelines, assignment deadlines and teaching sessions are released one academic year in advance to enable teachers to plan their time effectively. Teaching occurs at weekends so as not to impact school commitments (although appropriate flexible working may be offered by some employers).

The course is taught by staff with expertise across all phases of education, with specialist knowledge and research profiles across a wide spread of subject specialisms (Mathematics, English, Science, the Visual and Performing Arts and Design Technology, History, Geography and Religious Education, Modern Foreign Languages, and Physical Education) and areas of education including the broad areas of inclusion, social justice, literacy, numeracy, teacher resilience, knowledge and creativity.

The class size for this course is approximately 15 to 20 students.

Contact Hours

Research in Professional Practice

Assessment by:

• A short evaluation of a research paper relevant to an area of education that interests you.
• A research proposal for a research study you plan to conduct in school

Ethics Portfolio

Assessment by:

• Submission of a full ethics application to carry out your research study including accompanying documents such as participant information forms.

Dissertation

Assessment by:

• A 20,000 word dissertation outlining your completed research study: including rationale, literature review, methodology and ethics, results and discussion of findings.

Reading lists

Most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library. If you would like to view reading lists for the current cohort of students you can visit our Warwick Library web page.

Your timetable

Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for all modules and you have been allocated to your lectures, seminars and other small group classes. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you when you join us.

You must hold a UK PGCE (completed in the last 5 years) and also a UK Bachelors degree with Honours at 2:ii or above, or equivalent level.

If your PGCE was completed more than 5 years ago you can consider our PGCert Professional Education which provides a way to receive academic credit for your work-based learning.

• Band B
• IELTS overall score of 7.0, minimum component scores of two at 6.0/6.5 and the rest at 7.0 or above.

There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Research in Professional Practice

This module aims to develop understanding of the research process and its relevance to your professional practice as a teacher, mentor or leader in education, including designing and carrying out research in your own field of practice. This includes identifying research questions and appropriate research strategies and gathering and analysing sources using a variety of methods. It will enable you to carry out research into an aspect of career development or current practice of interest and relevance to you.

Ethics Portfolio

The Ethics Portfolio module is designed to facilitate students on the MA Professional Education to carefully consider the challenges of researching ethically in schools as a practitioner, particularly with regards to how this might differ to teaching ethically.

The process of completing the portfolio will help you to work through common problems that teachers researching in school commonly face such as working with school data, negotiating the focus of their research with school leaders and working with vulnerable individuals. The module will help you prepare for the various conversations that need to take place in school with school leaders, colleagues, students and parents. Successful completion of the ethics portfolio will result in your formal ethics application being put forward to the ethics board. Prior to the module you will have already completed a draft of your Research Proposal.

Dissertation

This is the final major project of the MA Professional Education, providing an opportunity for you to consider in depth an area of academic and professional interest related to education.

Optional modules

There are no optional modules for this course.

There are no optional modules for this course.

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