EDUC47620: Conceptual Perspectives, Theories and Frameworks in Education

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• To contribute to students research education by considering the role of theory and conceptual frameworks in the research process.
• To develop students understanding of how different education theories and/or conceptual frameworks inform the types of questions researchers ask about education and how they go about answering them.
• To help students understand why educational researchers identify their conceptual framework and/or use theory, and how a theory or conceptual framework contributes to educational research.
• To enable students to critique educational theory, concepts, and frameworks, and how researchers use them to respond to key debates in education.
• To engage students with some of the key debates in education today.

• The module will start by considering what constitutes theory, and how theory informs research. In doing so, the module will invoke and reflect on a range of disciplinary lenses relevant to education. The module will further introduce select key education theories and conceptual frameworks and how they inform research in an area of study. For example, lecturers may illustrate a conceptual framework pertinent in their respective field or area of research, and how knowledge is produced in their field. Key contemporary questions (such as, poverty and education, educational policy, identities, cognitive and non-cognitive individual differences in learning, instructional design, or intercultural and language competences, international and comparative education, etc.) will be explored from different theoretical traditions and lenses. Notions of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinarity will also be considered.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Knowledge and understanding of a range of education theories and frameworks and how they might be evaluated.
• Knowledge and understanding of how educational theories and frameworks inform educational research.
• Knowledge and understanding of how theoretical frameworks are used to explore key debates in education today.

Subject-specific Skills:

• To reflect critically on theories, frameworks and concepts encountered in education.
• To identify the theoretical basis of educational research.
• To reflect critically on educational researchers use of theories and conceptual frameworks.

Key Skills:

• To read and think critically and independently.
• To develop critical enquiry.
• To develop study and research skills.
• To use written and spoken communication skills.

• An intensive programme of weekly lectures, seminars (including group work) and self-guided learning. Lectures will give up-to-date knowledge of educational theory and help structure students own study and learning towards the learning objectives. Seminars will facilitate a more in-depth student engagement with themes and issues raised in the lectures. The format of lectures and in particular seminar exercises will enable students to critically discuss key module concepts and engage with seminal texts, interpretations and commentaries. Assessment will take the form of one essay. This will provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate the extent to which they have understood and are able to engage critically with the theories and concepts covered under the learning outcomes.

Peer presentations relating to critical reading and discussion of key texts in seminars; journal reading; essay planning activities and written feedback on a summative assignment plan.

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