How is Education Studies taught?

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great week!

In this post I'm going to try my best to talk you all through the different teaching aspects of my course, 'Education Studies' so I hope this will tell you all a little bit more about the way the course is set out and hopefully give those of you looking to start this course a little more insight into it rather than feeling like you're going in blind as that can seem extremely scary!

First things first this course is mainly about lectures and seminars, in your second year there is one unit which requires you to go out and find a placement however other than that you can either do a placement as well as your university studies but you will have to find this yourself. There are careers advisors who you can talk to who will be able to put you in the right direction of a placement so you're not entirely alone on this part. However, I would suggest if you think this would be for you to write a letter and/or a generic email and send it to several different schools in the area or wherever you can travel to asking if they would take you for some voluntary work experience and I'm sure some will get back to you.

So, the course is split up into three years and I thought I'd explain year by year:

• Year 1: This consists of four units all of which are core which I know some have changed since I was a first year but basically this year will be entirely lecture based with assignments dotted about in each term. For most units you will have two to three assignments, so around I'd say between 8 and 12 for your first year. This year is not difficult and no it does not count towards your final university grade, however you do need to put effort in because if you don't pass your first year you will not be allowed into second year which you obviously need if you want a degree. The assignments will most probably be mainly essays, but also presentations too. 
• Year 2: This year also consists of four units, two of which are core and two are optional. So, you do get to choose two out of your four units this year. The two core units for me this year were 'Comparative Education' which was all about different countries education and history of education and 'Research Methods' which is a unit dedicated to preparing you for your dissertations. There were several options to choose from including 'SEND' which is special educational needs teaching, 'Understanding the Workplace' which is the one that requires you to find a placement, and the two that I picked are 'Lifelong curriculum' which supports this wanting to go straight into a PGCE or some kind of teacher training, its basically all about the curriculum, 'Children and young people in the Digital Age' which is all about technologies influences on children and young people. This particular unit assesses you through a web folio which you work on throughout the whole unit and the final deadline is at the end of your second year, I really enjoyed this assignment. 
• Year 3: Now I can't tell you much about year 3 in detail as I haven't actually started it yet however as you all will know this year consists of your dissertation and a few other assignments within your units. The main thing this year though is the 8,000 word dissertation. 

There is a lot of use of facilities throughout the degree, the library is used a lot and particularly for m in second year there was a lot of computer suite use for my digital age unit as the web folio assignment is all online there's no paper submission for this assignment. 

If you go onto the universities website and search for 'Education Studies BA Hons this is the overview it gives you: 

Choose Education Studies BA (Hons) degree at Bedfordshire and:

• Learn about the workplace and choose optional themes depending on your own interests
• 
  
• Study inclusion, disability and special needs education, education and technology, sociology of childhood and education, philosophy and psychology of education
• 
  
• Develop your employability skills through work placements, volunteering and a research project
• 
  
• Gain a qualification that allows you to progress to a teacher training course such as postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) or graduate teacher programme (GTP)
• 
  
• Benefit from studying with staff with extensive experience in teacher training and education, with teaching informed by the Education Research Institute
• 
  

- See more at: http://www.beds.ac.uk/howtoapply/courses/undergraduate/education-studies#sthash.dwysHULF.dpuf 

I hope this post has given you a bit more information about how this course is taught. 

Until next time, 

M

2000 words... DONE!

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all ok!

So I think I mentioned last week that this weeks post would basically be a low down on one of my units called The Lifelong Curriculum, seeing as last weeks was dedicated to the Digital Age unit.

I had to make this image really big so that you can see all of the words, which I hope you can as this is the biggest it will go. This image is one of many that come up when you search lifelong learning online. I personally think it is a brilliant representation of what lifelong learning is. It shows so many different words that contribute to the whole idea of lifelong learning and they are all jumbled together which shows that things may not be in order but they still happen and we still learn. 

As we speak I have just uploaded my 2,000 word essay (well 1,849 to be exact, we are allowed 10 percent either side of 2,000), for my first assignment for Lifelong.

I'm not going to lie to you, this is one of the units I thought I would love. I primarily took it because I wanted to become a teacher which most people on my course want to do (obviously)! However, I'm not sure whether it's because I have had a change of career path or because the unit itself may not suit me as well as I thought it would, but I'm just not loving it,which is a shame I know. One of the main good points about being able to choose two units of your choice in second year is that you are more than likely going to enjoy the two you get to pick.

You are probably wondering now "Change in career....?" Well basically, I still want to work in education, I had just been having cold feet a couple months back about becoming a teacher. I do still like the idea of it, I just don't LOVE it. I'm not upset about it, because I have done a lot of research and am planning to go and see the career adviser's at uni so I  don't want to say anything until I know its definitely possible, I'm sure it is I just want clarification from someone who really knows what they're talking about. A.K.A a career adviser.

So I do still love my course and I know it was the right choice for me, I'm just slightly moving away from the whole 'actual teacher' role.

The course is still completely relevant to my possible career path.

Lifelong curriculum is all about how the current national curriculum supports us throughout our whole lives and is not something we just leave behind at school. You study every subject and complete an assignment and presentation about the subjects of your choice. It is very interesting and has actually opened my eyes to the fact that I do still use such things I learnt in school that I thought would never be relevant in later life.

As far as the assignments go, I've only completed the essay so far but I know the presentation will be the nicer of the two for me because I am quite a relaxed presenter and writing essays is not exactly a walk in the park for me, especially long ones like this one!!!

For this assignment, I chose the English National curriculum for key stage 2, mainly because I enjoyed English the most at school. It was difficult, I won't lie, and I found it hard to start off, but once I was into it, it wasn't so bad. I wouldn't say it was the best essay I've ever written though; I'm not the most confident about this one.

If you want to be a teacher, take this unit as it is recommended by the University that you do so, and I do see the relevance to a teaching career.

I'd also like to say that it really doesn't matter if you don't know what you exactly want to be. I was getting stressed that I had changed my mind and tried to convince myself teaching was what I was doing; I had made up my mind and I just had to stick with it. But I just flipped one day, and realised that I can be whatever I want, and began researching and found something I'm truly interested in. So, basically don't worry if you are taking or thinking about taking a degree but haven't yet figured out your career path or ideas of what you want to do.

I thought this was an interesting image as it represents exactly what this post discuss... the fact that even if you go off track and change your mind, you're still learning no matter what path you choose, and that is what lifelong learning is all about. 

Until next time,

M