Education and Early Years

Overview

The School of Education at Oxford Brookes is one of the largest schools of Education in the UK. The school combines high quality teaching and a vibrant research community with a commitment to understanding and developing student potential. Our focus is on developing future leaders for teaching and other education related professions.

As a recognised centre for professional development and training, the School of Education is committed to providing high quality postgraduate taught courses that are tailored to meet the educational and development needs of local, national and international students. All our courses are underpinned by leading research.

We offer flexible routes to master’s study that suit your professional, personal and financial circumstances. The range of modules on our programmes allows you to construct different pathways of either full time or part-time study, enabling you to develop specialist knowledge and professional skills that will improve your practice and advance your career.

MA Education

The MA in Education is designed for teachers, lecturers and educational managers in primary, secondary and further and higher education, and for other professionals working in education, both in their early careers and with substantial experience in education. The course is concerned with the development of critical enquiry and reflection in the field of education, and the development of professional knowledge and expertise. You can study the course at either our Harcourt Hill campus or via distance learning.

As well as the MA Education, we offer other specialised courses on the MA Education, they are: MA Education – Childhood and Youth Studies, MA Education – TESOL, MA Education – Leadership and Management , MA Education – SEND and MA Education – Artist Teacher Practice.

You can enrol on the full MA Education or take a staged approach by studying for a Postgraduate Diploma or a Postgraduate Certificate. Giving you credits you can apply to the full MA Education. So you're in an advanced position on your MA Education course.

Postgraduate Diploma and Postgraduate Certificates

Progress your professional practice with a Postgraduate Diploma or Postgraduate Certificate Awards.

Study with colleagues with similar professional interests. Where you can share experiences, to develop your knowledge and practice.

You'll conduct a research project on your own practice. Building your specialist skills to meet your professional needs.

All the courses have a flexible structure that will help you study while you are working. You'll receive expert tuition from experienced lecturers to succeed on your course.

Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties

On this course, you'll enhance your understanding, skills and expertise in relation to children and young people with social, emotional and mental health difficulties (SEMH).

Course information

Children's Literature

You will develop your understanding of the 2014 national curriculum in respect of Reading for Pleasure. You will focus on understanding how texts are constructed using a range of narrative modes and how this aspect of your subject knowledge can be employed in the primary classroom to develop children’s abilities to read a range of texts for pleasure. You will also explore a variety of texts currently available including classic texts; comics; novels in verse form; literature in translation and interactive texts.

Find out more about PCert in Children's Literature

Leadership and Management

This course is aimed at middle-management level leaders in schools (heads of department, key stage co-ordinators, pastoral managers). It provides an overview of up-to-date research and educational theory to inform the process of leadership and management. It also offers opportunities for the practical application of theory in a school setting.

Find out more about PG Cert in Leadership and Management

SENCO

The National Award for Special Educational Needs (SEN) Coordination is a mandatory course for new SENCOs and for SENCOs presently working in this role. The course covers policy and practice, teaching and learning and managing issues in SEN.

Find out more about PG Cert in Special Educational Needs Coordination

Teaching Multilingual Learners

This course focuses on children in English-speaking schools, whose first language is not English. You will analyse the needs and support of the development of children in second languages settings.

There will be opportunities to discuss theories of bilingualism and to develop an appreciation of the links between first and second language, identity and self-esteem and the emotional experiences of the EAL child. Alternative practices and pedagogies will be evaluated with consideration given to the beliefs, theories and attitudes to language and the EAL learner that underpin teacher choices of approach.

Find out more about PG Cert in Teaching Multilingual Learners

Working with Children with Literacy Difficulties

This course is designed for experienced teachers and graduate teaching assistants working with children and young people with literacy difficulties. You will study alternative perspectives on literacy difficulties, managing literacy difficulties in schools and the assessment and intervention where literacy difficulties are present.

The course is organised by Oxford Brookes in partnership with Oxfordshire Local Authority.

Find out more about PG Cert in Working with Children with Literacy Difficulties

Artist Teacher Practice†

The Artist Teacher Scheme (ATS) is the national programme of continuing professional development courses for artist teachers. If you are working in Art education this scheme provides opportunities for you to review and develop your personal creative practice in relation to the highest levels of contemporary practice.

The programme is based on the central belief that educators of art, design and craft who maintain and develop their own creative practice can be significantly more effective professionally and more likely to be satisfied with their educational work.

Find out more about the Artist Teacher Scheme

Education - Childhood and Youth Studies

On this PGCert in Childhood and Youth Studies you will explore today’s children, youth and families - and develop your practice to value every child.

Find out more about PGCert in Childhood and Youth Studies

†Applicants to the Artist Teacher Practice should be working in art education in some capacity. Applicants do not need Qualified Teacher Status.

For further information on any of our Postgraduate Certificate Awards please email pg-education@brookes.ac.uk or Tel: +44 (0)1865 488617.

Continuing Professional Development

What we offer

CECD staff have decades of experience in providing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and training for teachers and educational professionals. We adopt a portfolio approach to CPD for teachers, connecting our different training events as part of a coherent programme of development. This personalised portfolio approach allows teachers to develop best practice that is innovative, critical, cohesive and forward-thinking, while encouraging retention and the development of in-school expertise. At CECD we tailor the content of our CPD provision to meet the specific needs of educational practitioners and schools.

In addition to our portfolio model, we can also design one-off CPD and training courses and events.

School Leadership Training Programme

The programme aims to develop and support future leaders in our schools. If you are in your 2nd, 3rd or 4th year of teaching we recognise that attractive development opportunities to explore the ideas of leadership in a school are rare – particularly prior to taking on responsibility.

This programme provides a chance to meet with other early career teachers, develop professional links and skills and add to your experiences in advance of any steps into leadership you may take next.

Children’s Literature and the Importance of Reading for Pleasure

This course will be based on reading and findings with regards to best practice for sharing children’s books in the classroom. The course leader, Mat Tobin, will share his 17 years’ experience as a teacher and teacher educator combined with the most recent and relevant data relating to raising reading standards in the classroom. There is increasing evidence to show that teacher subject knowledge about children’s books is key to the raising of standards, and so the course looks to promote an ethos of support and sharing of great children’s literature throughout the school whilst also supporting teachers with the skills to ask rich, engaging questions and foster positive booktalk in their schools.

Thinking, Doing, Talking Science

The Bright Ideas Time is one of the strategies used within the Thinking, Doing, Talking Science project. It is a dedicated discussion slot within primary science lessons and Helen Wilson, Principal Lecturer in Science Education at Oxford Brookes University, will share a range of ideas to prompt pupils’ talking in order to encourage their Higher Order Thinking. The course will be interactive and practical and will include ways of encouraging the pupils to focus their recording on the learning objectives so that it releases time for the talking and doing whilst at the same time producing work that can be sharply assessed.

Problem Solving and Reasoning in Key Stages 1 and 2 Mathematics

This course has been designed to help teachers develop their strategies when approaching two of the three aims of the National Curriculum for Maths. It aims to increase understanding of effective practice in teaching problem solving and reasoning, while facilitating and supporting cross-school practical lesson study projects, with a clear focus on improving pupil learning and engagement. This course will equip you to confidently plan and teach inspirational mathematics lessons that result in engagement of all pupils in meaningful learning activities and support the aims of the National Curriculum.

Special Educational Needs/Disabilities (SEND), Inclusion and Wellbeing

CECD is excited to be working with the English Schools Foundation in Hong Kong to deliver a certified course of online CPD focusing on core knowledge relating to SEND. This course is designed for Teaching Assistants and teachers in their first two years of practice. The training consists of six online sessions taking place over six weeks and including online lectures/webinars, online forum discussions and activities. In 2018-2019 we will be running an equivalent online programme for UK-based practitioners. The course will cover the following topics:

Autistic Spectrum Conditions
Social Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties
Attachment and emotional development;
An introduction to ADHD
Compassionate approaches in education;
Literacy Difficulties: Characteristics of skilled and impaired reading/writing.
Using key theories to identify different types of literacy difficulties, including dyslexia and SLI

The role of the teacher in supporting literacy development for students with difficulties.

We also offer the opportunity to transfer CPD experiences into academic credit that can be used towards the completion of one of our accredited postgraduate qualifications.

To find out more please contact email education-cecd@brookes.ac.uk or call us on +44 (0) 1865 488511.

Facilities

School Experience Centre

Our School Experience Centre is a treasure trove of learning materials that you can borrow for your lessons, when you are on teaching placement.

Resources available

There is a wide range of literature to support the teaching of English in Key Stages 1 and 2 along with a large selection of books and resource packs that can be used to support the teaching of the core and broader curriculum. Musical instruments, story sacks and mathematics manipulatives are among the wide range of other resources that can be borrowed to support on-placement learning.

More information about what is available from the School Experience Centre and how to contact the librarian is below:

How can I find what I want?

As with the material in the Main Library all items in the SEC are on LibrarySearch and are shelved by subject eg all resources on the Victorians can be found at 941.081. The location given will be the School Experience Centre, and each item will have a blue piece of tape on the spine to distinguish it . If you wish to find items JUST from the School Experience Centre you can restrict your search on LibrarySearch by limiting your search to 'School Experience Centre'. The LibrarySearch entry will also tell you which of the following formats to look in:

SEC Children's Book
SEC Children's Big Book
SEC Poster
SEC CD-ROM
SEC CD
SEC Resource Pack
SEC Maths equipment
SEC Reference
SEC Artefact (kept in the stack please ask a member of library staff to get this for you

Books

Fiction
Non-fiction
Picture books
Big books
Pupil and teacher textbooks
Reference collection - including reading and maths schemes, and other photocopiable resources

Other resources

DVDs
CDs and Cassettes
CD-ROMs
Artefacts
Resource packs
Posters/illustrations
Games and musical instruments
Equipment - including maths and science equipment

Journals

The Library journal collection includes a number of titles of relevance to student teachers offering up to date information on practical and theoretical issues. All our holdings can be found on LibrarySearch by searching by title or keyword. This will indicate whether a print and/or electronic version is available. All print journals are reference only and are kept in the Main Library on the ground floor.

Articles from journals may be photocopied. Some useful titles are listed below:

Child Education and Child Education Topics
Junior Education and Junior Education Topics
Primary Geographer
Primary History

Language resources

We have multiple copies of some picture books and junior fiction and it is possible to borrow more than one copy of an item to take into school if required. Sometimes there are Big Book versions of the same text also available to borrow.

Wordless Picture Books and Dual Language Texts

We have a growing collection of both wordless picture books and dual language texts available to borrow. You can find these by using LibrarySearch and searching by keywords wordless picture books or dual language.

Borrowing items

Most of the loanable material in the SEC can be borrowed for six weeks. One week loan items have an additional piece of yellow tape on the spine and reference books a piece of red tape. Reference books cannot be borrowed, but some titles may also have a duplicate loan copy so please always check using LibrarySearch. The LibrarySearch entry will indicate how many copies there are, which ones are reference or loan copies and how long the loan periods are. Education students may borrow 20 items at a time from this collection in addition to 15 items from the main library. Other users may borrow up to 5 items from the SEC, in addition to their normal loan allocation.

Facilities

Seating is arranged so that groups can sit together and discuss project work. There are two bookable group study rooms which have PCs with interactive whiteboards. These can be booked online via the Library home page. There is also a network of thirteen networked computers. A machine for printing/scanning/photocopying in black and white and colour is located outside Group Study room 2. The DVD collection is housed outside this room and a machine for previewing DVDs is located next to the QuickSearch (catalogue) machines.

Making contact

Your Academic Liaison Librarian with responsibility for the School Experience Centre is Charlotte Olehnovics. Charlotte can be contacted on 01865 488220 at Harcourt Hill Library or by email at educationlibrarians@brookes.ac.uk (she works all day Monday, Tuesday afternoon/evening, and Wednesday mornings).