Modules

Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability is subject to change. Modules that are in use for the current academic year are linked for further information. Where no link is present, further information is not yet available.

Full-time

In this programme, you will have opportunities to explore educational practice, analyse research, and review policy intentions and actions in the early years field at both individual and societal levels.

The first year of your studies explores the understandings that underpin the programme. This year emphasises the significance of theory and pedagogy while observing international definitions and perspectives of early childhood education. The second year deepens your knowledge by focusing on policy developments addressing constructions and deconstructions of early childhood education from global perspectives. The third and final year supports your understanding of leadership and professionalisation and includes a research project within early childhood education to explore techniques of analysis and enquiry.

Every year, you will critically examine tensions and knowledge of global and local interpretations of childhood(s) while undertaking practice-based modules to engage with professional values and develop leadership skills, including problem-solving, teamwork and decision-making.

Year 1 compulsory modules:

Global childhoods: her/histories, cultures, and societies

This module introduces constructions and deconstructions of early childhood education as a social, cultural, economic, anthropological, biological, psychological, political, and historical phenomenon. Students will consider possibilities of interpreting early childhood education as a right of the child, a concept, a process, a business, and a field of study while analysing international definitions, perspectives and understandings at individual, national and global levels. The module will provide opportunities for interrogating and deciphering meanings and ambiguities of early childhood education considering intersectionalities of gender, ‘race’, socioeconomic status/class, and socio-cultural backgrounds alongside ensuing taken-for-granted assumptions. The module aims to open critical spaces for deepening understandings of early childhood education that underpin the programme.

Practice-Based Community Learning I

There is wide use of informal, formal and mixed pedagogies within various disciplines and learning environments. This module will introduce students to early childhood education theories, policies, and practices of pedagogy within diverse sectors. This module provides students with practice-based opportunities to learn from, visit, and observe, pedagogical action in formal, informal or mixed pedagogical spaces (e.g., school classrooms, nursery setting, libraries, museums, art galleries, hospitals, NGOs). Students will engage with a major thematic element from one of the core modules, Global Childhoods or Theoretical Perspectives on Children’s Learning and Development, observe this in the setting, and write a critical report synthesising the observations along with a survey of relevant academic literature. Students will informally present these findings to the setting in order to give them an outsider’s perspective of their institution.

Theoretical perspectives of children's learning and development

This module is an introduction to theoretical perspectives of how children learn and develop from birth through to eight years. By introducing students to diverse historical and contemporary perspectives about children’s learning and development, this module aims to provide students with an in-depth and systematic knowledge of competing views and their unique implications for early childhood education. Topics will include but are not limited to - historical perspectives of learning and development, sociological perspectives, psychological perspectives, social justice perspectives, children’s rights perspectives, the construction of knowledge, behaviourism, global perspectives, and relationships between theory and practice.

Year 2 compulsory modules:

Children with special rights: Transdisciplinary approaches to inclusion in early childhood education

This module will discuss diverse images of the child within contextual understandings of children's potentialities for learning and development. It will focus on all children as subjects of rights, beyond diagnosis, while considering the purpose of inclusive educational environments in welcoming and supporting children with diverse abilities and their families. Students will explore knowledge about children with special rights as provisional, subjective, complex, transdisciplinary, and transformative through time and experiences. The pluralities of views offered by various professionals, policies, and research, will be considered to understand the diversities of learning, developing, feeling, expressing and experiencing the world.

Global perspectives: early childhood education for sustainability

This module will discuss education for sustainable development in early childhood from a global perspective. It will examine the knowledge and skills necessary to consider children and early childhood professionals as agents of change and transformation, committed problem-solvers and critical thinkers to create healthily, just and sustainable ways of living and experiencing the world. Students will explore the rights, responsibilities and actions from individual, political and professional positions by considering the historical contexts, complexities, and challenges of early childhood education for sustainability (including the sustainable development agenda and impact on countries in the global North and South). The module will focus on international movements for sustainable approaches which contribute to future sustainable and enabling societies and their impact in early childhood education policy, research, and practice.

Practice-Based Community Learning II

This module builds upon the foundations of Level 4 and allows the students to crystalise theoretical knowledge through practice.  This practice-based module connects with the content of the compulsory module, Voice and choice: social justice, children’s rights and democratic early childhood pedagogies.  Students will critically reflect on each unit in the core module, connect with relevant academic literature, and present the results in a reflective diary for assessment.  Students will informally present their reflective diary to the setting, in order to give an outsider’s perspective on the setting.

Research Methods in early childhood education

This module provides a broad introduction to research methods in early childhood education.  Students will critically examine diverse methodologies, both historic and contemporary, in global early childhood contexts.  There will be a particular focus on ethics and the rights of the child. Units in the module will interrogate links between theoretical perspectives about childhood, learning and education and methodologies used to investigate early childhood education.

Voice and choice: social justice, children's rights and democratic early childhood pedagogies

This module is concerned with social justice within the lives of children, parents and early childhood professionals. It challenges the grand narratives which prevail in the early childhood education field, by drawing on critical, post-colonial, feminist, and post-modern theories to understand the complexities of diversity within this education sector. Students will deconstruct theories, policies, everyday practices and pedagogies to provide a chance to capture complexities of life, question, and critically rethink traditional frames, experiences, and cemented beliefs in ECE. The module debates multiple discourses and critical reconceptualisations, including children's rights and democratic early childhood pedagogies.

Year 3 compulsory modules:

Practice-Based Community Learning III

This module allows students to gain significant responsibility in a practical setting. Students, along with the chosen setting, will choose one relevant area of early childhood education to investigate independently. Students will negotiate a topic of investigation with the setting and their tutor and produce a fieldwork report. This fieldwork report amalgamates the content learned in the module and throughout the undergraduate programme, relevant literature, and the small-scale research undertaken during the practice-based work.

The assessment also reflects the interests of the setting, which may request certain topics of investigation from the student, in order to improve the setting’s own practice. In addition, students will submit, as appendices, an updated CV and careers statement, in order to reflect their time in the setting.

Research Project

The Research Project module is a culmination of learning on the BA Early Childhood Education programme.  Students will select a topic or area of specialism and conduct a small-scale research project on this topic with guidance from a supervisor. The project can include the collection of empirical data, or can be a desk study (literature review).

Your learning

You will learn from various interactive lectures, small group seminars, synchronous and asynchronous online activities, practice-based experiences in educational settings, collaborative tasks, critical reading of academic literature, and research projects. Contact hours vary and depend on your optional module choices. You will also engage in independent study (e.g., by studying key topics and required readings in preparation for the debates in the programme).

Typical contact hours vary between 8-12 hours a week, depending on the year of study and module choice and include lectures, seminars, practice-based activities and e-learning activities. Students will also display a level of independent study (25-30 hours per week), for example, by engaging with key topics and required readings in preparation for the discussions promoted in the programme.

Assessment

Assessments include essays, group and individual presentations, podcasts, reflective diaries, posters, creative products, portfolios, reports, and research projects. These methods enable opportunities to learn and produce public-facing documents about early childhood education while developing communication skills valuable to diverse career settings (such as writing and expressing ideas to different audiences).

Accessibility

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble. Further information can also be obtained from the UCL Student Support and Wellbeing team.