Masters multi-disciplinary dissertation: education, childhood and youth

What you will study

This module is an opportunity for you to explore in some depth an issue, challenge, or topic that interests you personally and/or professionally, is relevant to your particular qualification, and is meaningful and pertinent to education and/or the lives of children and young people.

The first aim of the module is to equip you with the knowledge, understanding and skills to operate effectively as a researcher in educational contexts and services for children and young people. This module will support you in developing the capabilities to understand and contribute to research within your current or future professional contexts.

The second aim is to support you in successfully producing a dissertation. It will provide you with opportunities to develop and demonstrate your confidence and independent research abilities. You’ll find this module will give you insights into your own implicit or developing research position and help you to understand how this shapes the kind of research you’d undertake (the questions you ask, the design you create, the methods you use).

It’s anticipated that you are or wish to be involved in work in educational contexts and/or with children and/or young people in some capacity. This module will enable you to progress professionally as well as academically and help you if you’re not currently working in these sectors to enter the workforce. You’ll be supported through personal development planning to make explicit how you’re benefiting from study on the module, including developing personal skills and understandings. In particular, you’ll be able to chart your developing identity as a researcher.

This module caters both for those who have access to educational or other settings with children and young people to carry out a small-scale investigation (option 1) and those who do not and/or who prefer to carry out an extended literature review and research proposal (option 2) for a study which might be carried out beyond the MA qualification. Both forms of research represent current research approaches in the fields of education and childhood and youth. You’ll also learn how ethically to appraise an enquiry. For option 1, you’ll be supported in obtaining ethical clearance from your chosen research setting before commencing data collection. In option 2, you’ll include a proposal that would form a sound basis for approval by your proposed research setting.

One unique aspect of this module is the way you’ll be working with peers and tutors from different specialisms, allowing discussion across different disciplines and different professional perspectives. The content of the module will be equally relevant to you whether you are from a background in, for example, early years, teaching, educational leadership in a range of settings, youth work, social work, nursing and counselling, and if you are or have worked with children and young people at different stages of development, from early childhood to young adulthood. All materials, online study guides and audio-visual resources will be accessible to you whatever your context. You’ll be supported by a tutor who has expertise and experience relevant to your qualification; and, at times, in groups of those working on an enquiry similar to your own.

You will learn

By the end of the module, and hence your MA qualification, you’ll be able to:

• demonstrate self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems, and act autonomously in planning and implementing tasks at a professional or equivalent level
• reflect critically and constructively on ideas and frameworks presented in the module and their application to your practice and organisational context
• plan, analyse, develop and produce an extended literature review and research proposal or plan, conduct, analyse and report on a small-scale investigation within a professional setting to enhance the understanding of practice.

You’ll have acquired and/or had the opportunity to develop qualities and transferable skills valuable for increasing your employability, such as those requiring:

• the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility
• applied research and ethical issues relating to research and enquiry in their area of study
• decision making in complex and unpredictable situations
• the independent learning ability required for continuing professional development
• the production of reports/outputs for academic and professional purpose

Teaching and assessment

Support from your tutor

You’ll be assigned a tutor who will help you with the study material and grade and comment on your written work, and to whom you can turn for advice and guidance. You and your tutor will primarily communicate with each other through email, tutorials and one-to-one supervision. For the last unit of the dissertation, when you will be developing the written dissertation, you will have a dedicated forum space for one-to-one support from your tutor, who will give you feedback on three drafts of chapters. These drafts are not marked and do not form part of the module's assessment but are great opportunities to support the construction of your dissertation.

Tutorials are offered via online meeting rooms and support is also facilitated asynchronously in tutor group forums and module forums. Tutors across the module will also offer online sessions about aspects of the content of the module to the students across the module, which will be a good way to ‘meet’ other students and tutors.

Working with other students

It’s not a compulsory requirement for you to interact or collaborate with others in your tutor group to pass this module, but we do encourage you to share ideas and experiences with your peers through asynchronous forums. There may be some activities that recommend working with other students as this is an important way in which you can broaden your knowledge and understanding of children, young people and education across different contexts. However, alternative ways of working can be facilitated.

Assessment

The assessment details for this module can be found in the facts box.