Developmental Psychology - 2012 entry

Course content

The course aims to develop your:

• ability to critically evaluate evidence and current issues in child development
• ability to plan, design and carry out research in the domain of developmental psychology
• knowledge and experience of different research methods in the study of children's psychological development
• knowledge of theories about children's cognitive, affective, social and cultural development
• own ideas and interests in the domain of child development
• capacity to communicate and collaborate in the construction of knowledge about children's development.

The course is offered as a master's in research (MRes), which carries 180 master's-level credit accumulation and transfer system (CATS) credits.

The MRes in Developmental Psychology is based on the completion of all modules, including the module Research Design Skills and a 10,000-word research-based dissertation.

Modules

Theory and Research Methods in Psychology (20 M-level CATS credits) advances student knowledge of qualitative and quantitative research methods in psychology, with particular reference to cognition, intelligence and individual differences. The syllabus covers qualitative methods, ethnography and case studies in psychological research; the interview as a method of data collection; theoretical and methodological approaches in the analysis of interviews; intelligence and psychological testing; the use of computational models of cognitive processes and the use of psychometric methods; and critical analysis of research papers and methods.

Research Methods in Developmental Psychology (20 M-level CATS credits) focuses on conceptual, design, and analytic issues in research on child development. Topics include the nature of child development, central questions in developmental psychology, research paradigms and research designs. The module also provides hands-on experience of a range of analytical techniques and tools in developmental psychology research, including the analysis of observational, cross-sectional, longitudinal, interview and psychometric data.

Experimental Method and Statistics for Psychology (20 M-level CATS credits) advances students' knowledge of statistical concepts and techniques of analysis, building on students' knowledge of statistics acquired during their previous experience of research methods and statistics.. It covers standard and advanced statistical theory and methods providing an opportunity to consolidate and extend statistical expertise in descriptive and inferential statistics. This module also provides an introduction to multinomial and multivariate analysis, and analysis of data using SPSS.

Developmental Psychology I (20 M-level CATS credits) and Developmental Psychology II (20 M-level CATS credits) provide you with a socio-cultural view of development and how education impacts on development and cognition. Topics covered include paradigms for analysing cognitive developmental theory, reasoning, memory and executive function; culture and cognition, socialisation, and identity; children in schools; gender roles in development; and language development in relation to reading and writing.

Atypical Development (20 M-level CATS credits) enables you to develop a critical understanding of key aspects of cognition, their biological basis and their development. Topics covered include developmental cognitive neuropsychology, disorders of language and motor development, literacy, sleep problems and autism.

Research Design Skills (10 M-level CATS credits) provides a structured framework within which you identify your thesis topic, critically review relevant previous research, and develop a workable design for your empirical project. The module ensures that you carry out the theoretical and methodological groundwork for your research-based dissertation and provides milestones for project development and an opportunity to gain tutor and peer feedback.

Research-based Dissertation (50 M-level CATS credits) is 10,000 words long. It is an extended and supervised piece of work reporting new empirical data. It is always grounded in a thorough review of the relevant scientific literature and normally requires experimental data collection. The aim of the dissertation is to allow you to develop your own ideas in a specific domain of developmental psychology and to provide you with experience in research design, data collection, analysis and interpretation. You will also have the opportunity to work alongside an experienced academic from the developmental psychology research group in the Psychology Department. The content consists of individual tutorials with project supervisors and individual work.

The MRes programme may be taken on either a full-time or part-time basis. Full-time students take all modules in one year split over the two semesters as indicated above. Part-time students split the work over two years with the research-based dissertation being done in the second year of study.

A Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) in Developmental Psychology is also available which involves successful completion of all modules except for Research Design Skills and the Research-based dissertation. A Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Developmental Psychology can also be gained upon successful completion of the modules Atypical Development and Developmental Psychology I.

NB As courses are reviewed regularly, the module list for this course may vary from that shown here.

Faculty

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences

Department

Department of Psychology

Course length

Full-time: 12 months
Part-time: 24 months

Teaching location

Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane

Start date

September 2012

UKPASS code

P038210

Entry requirements

You must normally possess the following qualifications:

• a high second-class (2:1) or first-class honours degree in psychology or an acceptable cognate discipline or
• an academic award equivalent to an honours degree in psychology, such as a graduate conversion course in Psychology

Scholarships and funding

For scholarships offered by the Faculty of Health and Social Care, please visit http://www.brookes.ac.uk/studying/finance/support.

For general sources of financial support, see:

• funding for students from the UK and EU
• funding for students from outside the EU

Why Oxford is a great place to study Developmental Psychology

Oxford has much to offer students of psychology. In addition to our own excellent libraries and resource centres, our postgraduate students have access to the world-renowned Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Science Library. Our location amongst Oxford’s famed teaching hospitals offers opportunities for students to gain valuable experience through voluntary work. We also have strong research connections with local schools through the School of Education. Staff in the department are currently undertaking research in conjunction with local car manufacturers, energy companies, and the government.

Support for students studying Developmental Psychology

We make extensive use of our intranet pages to provide you with detailed, relevant information and resources for your course. This will include materials ranging from course handouts through to research ethics guidelines, experiments, statistics packages and student handbooks. We also have an online booking system so you can make appointments to see your personal tutor.

Our psychology student support co-ordinator can give advice on your course, finance, accommodation or personal issues which may be affecting your study and will also regularly update you with information on visiting speakers, careers advice and course announcements. She can also help you to access other support services in the university such as ‘Upgrade’, which offers confidential advice on study skills, and English language support through the international centre.

How Brookes supports postgraduate students

Supporting your learning

From academic advisers and support co-ordinators to specialist subject librarians and other learning support staff, we want to ensure that you get the best out of your studies.

Personal support services

We want your time at Brookes to be as enjoyable and successful as possible. That's why we provide all the facilities you need to be relaxed, happy and healthy throughout your studies.

Departmental research highlights

Dr Kate Wilmut, course leader of the MSc Psychology has been awarded a prestigious ESRC grant of over £160k to conduct research into forward planning of movement in children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Recent figures suggest that 2% of children in the UK present with DCD and show difficulties with fine and gross motor skills that persist into adulthood. It is hoped that furthering our understanding of the potentially deficient systems in these children may lead to the development of remedial programmes.

The ESRC has also funded Professor Gert Westermann to investigate how infants learn to combine information from multiple senses and how this helps them to group objects into categories. The project will test approximately 120 infants between the ages of 9 and 15 months of age in the Brookes Babylab.

In addition, the ESRC has recently awarded funding to Professor Angus Gellatly. This funded work has been using psychophysical methods to explore the brain mechanisms associated with conscious perception of an object. The work has used normal observers and has investigated the circumstances in which a presented stimulus can and cannot be consciously perceived. In exploring this question this work has determined some of the factors associated with preattended and attended representations of a stimulus within the brain.

With funding from the Leverhulme Trust, Dr Vince Connelly is leading an interdisciplinary project conducting research into the writing problems of children with language difficulties. Embracing psychology, education and linguistics, this ground-breaking project is aimed at bridging the gaps in current knowledge and will help practitioners to develop literacy strategies to help this already disadvantaged group of children.

The British Academy has given a series of grants to Dr Jim Barnes to fund his ongoing work on visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s patients. This work has been exploring the behavioural and neurophysiological correlates of visual hallucinations and their relationship to normal perceptual processing.

Professor Margaret Harris and Dr Mark Burgess were awarded £640k by the Technology Strategy Board, a public research council that facilitates innovative technological collaboration between businesses and researchers. They are conducting multi-method research into the critical socio-psychological factors that underpin people’s transition from traditional combustion engine cars to ultra low carbon vehicles and are feeding their results back to car manufacturers, energy companies, and the government.

Research excellence

In the 2008 RAE, in which we submitted 85% of our staff, 75% of our research was classed as internationally recognised or excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour.  

Research areas and clusters

Developmental Psychology
Our focus is on cognitive, linguistic, social and motor development, sleep and its disorders and, in particular, developmental disorders such as dyslexia, specific language impairment and Developmental Coordination Disorder. Research in this area has recently been extended with the establishment of the Institute for Research in Child Development. Research students benefit from our interdisciplinary connections and will have the opportunity to work alongside colleagues in Education, Health and the Life Sciences and to connect with researchers at partner institutions.

Students undertaking research in this field benefit from our bespoke doctoral training programme focused on the scientific study of children and young people’s psychological development, education and health from birth to young adulthood. The programme fosters knowledge and skills in the application of psychological and social science theory and methodology and will prepare you to analyse and investigate developmental, health and educational questions in a multidisciplinary context.

Cognition and Neuroscience
Adult cognition and neuroscience investigates normal and dysfunctional processes involved in language, thinking, memory, perception and visual cognition. Our particular research interests include: audio-visual speech perception, visual perception, attention and cognition, visual masking, memory and reasoning, neurolinguistics and autism. Recent projects have looked at factors such as prospective memory, emotional factors in temporal order perception, object representations and change blindness, attentional factors in visual masking, processes of conceptual categorisation.

Qualitative Methods
Psychologists specialising in qualitative methods at Oxford Brookes investigate the socio-cultural and subjective nature of psychological phenomena by gaining an understanding of people’s knowledge, experiences and decision-making processes. Recent projects have researched attitudes to peace and terrorism, adapting to green technologies and perceptions of personal growth through musical development and performance, as well as research into cultural identity.