EDUC3341: The Social Life of Education

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• To introduce students to educational research derived from ethnography and anthropology.
• To introduce students to a discourse of educational research that contrasts with research derived from psychological and positivist traditions.
• To introduce students to educational research that explores education and training in a variety of informal and international contexts.

• Social constructivism, socio-cultural and social models of learning.
• Apprenticeship models of learning; informal models of learning.
• Learning across contexts: Everyday mathematics - the Adult Math Project in the USA in the 1980s; Everyday reading and writing - literacy learning in Iran in the 1970s and in North-West England in the 1990s; Everyday work - tailors in Liberia in the 1970s, and call centre workers in the USA in the 1990s; Everyday play - learning from and with video games, online spaces and social networks in the 2000s.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will develop knowledge and understanding of learning across context in education.
• Students will develop knowledge and understanding of social practice in education.
• Students will develop knowledge and understanding of contextual research in education.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Discuss and critique social practice models of learning.
• Synthesise elements of different social practice models of learning and account for the relationships between these.
• Critique the empirical and methodological foundations of social practice accounts of learning.

Key Skills:

• Acquire and evaluate complex information of diverse kinds in a systematic manner.
• Construct a sustained argument.
• Use a range of printed and online resources.

• Students will be introduced to the theoretical foundations of the module and the empirical studies outlined through a combination of lectures and guided reading.
• Students will extend their knowledge and understanding through seminars, all focussed on specific reading tasks, introduced through student-led formative presentations.
• Formative assessment throughout the module will allow for developmental as well as diagnostic feedback/feedforward.
• Students will be summatively assessed at the end of the module.

Ongoing seminar activities. Formative essay (1500-2000 words) marked to module outcomes and given an indicative grade but formative not summative so as to maximise feedforward potential.

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