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New BA degree on early childhood education launching at UCL
25 May 2023
IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, is launching a new Early Childhood Education BA to address global challenges by supporting the learning and development of children from birth up to the age of eight.
Led by the faculty’s Department of Learning and Leadership, the new BA course will welcome its first cohort of students in September 2024 on their way to becoming early years specialists and sector leaders.
Early childhood education is a growing field with significant global relevance. 'Early childhood' represents a crucial period in children's lives for cognitive, physical, psychological, emotional, cultural and social development and learning.
The positive impact that early years education can have on individuals and societies has been widely recognised and, in recent years, Early Childhood Education (ECE), especially the period before compulsory schooling, has become the subject of great interest and emerged as a policy priority for many governments and international organisations.
In this sense, as a field of study ECE emphasises children’s rights, social justice, and early childhood policy and practice. It also carries local, national and global dimensions which have influence in the rights of families, communities, women and minorities.
About the programme
Dr Diana Dos Santos Sousa, Programme Leader for the new BA, said: “We are excited to launch this new degree at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. This programme is distinctive in its focus on social justice issues within the lives of children, parents, early childhood professionals and communities. It reflects the pluralities of views offered by various professionals, policies, and research to understand diverse ways of learning, developing, feeling, expressing and experiencing our surroundings.
“The interdisciplinarity and socio-cultural diverse-abilities of the staff and students in this programme will contribute to developing specialists in early childhood education who are agents of change and transformation, and critical thinkers concerned with creating healthy, just and sustainable ways of living and experiencing the world.”
Prospective students can find out more about the course on the prospectus. Applications for 2024 entry will open in September 2023.
Links
- Early Childhood Education BA
- Watch the BA video
- UCL Undergraduate Open Days
- Q&A with Dr Diana Dos Santos Sousa
- Department of Learning and Leadership
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