Professional Education MA

Find out more about our Professional Education taught Master's degree at Warwick

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P-X3AS

MA

20 months part-time

January 2026

Centre for Teacher Education (CTE)

Online

This is an MA in Professional 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 PGCE with teaching practice or from our Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Education Programme. All Master's 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  

If you would like to view reading lists for current or previous cohorts of students, most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library on the Talis Aspire platform.  

You can search for reading lists by module title, code or convenor. Please see the modules tab of this page or the module catalogue.   

Please note that some reading lists may have restricted access or be unavailable at certain times of year due to publication dates. If you cannot access the reading list for a particular module, please check again later or contact the module’s host department.

Your timetable

Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for each module, and you have been allocated to your seminars. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you when you join us.

You must hold a PGCE (completed in the last 5 years) and also a UK Bachelor's degree with Honours at 2:2 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 A
• IELTS overall score of 6.5, minimum component scores not below 6.0.International students

We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications.

There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Optional modules

There are no optional modules for this course.