• Offered for Year: 2024/25

• Module Leader(s): Mr Fred Clark
• Lecturer: Mr Jon Haines, Mrs Susan O'Hagan, Professor Heather Smith

• Owning School: Education, Communication & Language Sci
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

Module Summary:

This module provides an opportunity to engage in practitioner enquiry linked to enhanced lesson planning within curriculum design. Students select a specific study theme and work in a supported group to explore the theme prior to planning a sequence of lessons that draws on the outcomes of their enhanced understanding. These lessons will provide a context for enquiry in practice. This is essentially a development and research project focused on the students understanding of teaching. The research and development process is one that fits into teachers’ accustomed professional practice, since the process of ‘plan, do, review’ is at the bedrock of the routines and development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. What distinguishes development and research is the intentional use of a range of tools that will give the teacher data that would not usually arise from an enquiry into teaching and learning or that would not be analysed in such a systematic way. This provides the vehicle for an independent study and practical action within the selected teaching and learning theme.

Aims :

a)       To provide a theoretical and practical grounding in the nature of curriculum
b)       To ensure students can demonstrate the attributes, skills, knowledge and understanding that make up the Teachers’ Standards for Qualified Teacher Status as set out by the Department of Education
c)       To enable students to develop as critical and analytical teachers through their reflective practice and engagement with research related to teaching and learning innovation in the context of curriculum design
d)       To allow students to develop as new teachers through collaborative planning and peer review
e)       To enable students to enter the teacher profession with the capacity to continue to explore and develop pedagogic practices within changing policy frameworks contexts

Outline Of Syllabus

Understanding what is meant by curriculum
The potential and constraints for curriculum design within current policy frameworks
Engagement with research through supported study groups. Students select a teaching and
learning theme.
Examples of themes include
- Inclusion and adaptive teaching
- Assessment and feedback for learning
- Digital technologies in teaching and learning
- Group work and classroom talk
- Independent learning and homework
- Literacy across the curriculum
- Numeracy across the curriculum
- Creativity in teaching and learning
Applying specialist knowledge to curriculum design
Research methods for analysing classroom practices and learning outcomes
Research ethics for teacher researchers

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

It is important that students develop critical perspectives on curriculum and their role in developing enhanced learning outcomes through curriculum development. This process is achieved through a development and research process, through which students develop a specific technical and research based knowledge of a chosen element of teaching and learning. They learn how to use practitioner enquiry tools to make sense of the consequences of this development from both their own and their pupils’ perspectives. This requires not only an awareness and capacity to engage with various theoretical ideas and concepts, but importantly the opportunity to debate and reflect on the meaning and implications of such ideas for their own situation and practice. Integrated readings introduce key issues and contexts from research, theory and practice which form the basis for taught sessions where students are able to discuss and reflect upon these questions in an informed way. The taught sessions support students in developing an integrated understanding of curriculum and pedagogy. They also introduce research ethics for teachers and relevant research methods. These are then used by the students to support the process of development and research. This model of practitioner enquiry is consistent across modules and combines professional learning with criticality and evaluative skills. It is also forms a means through which student teachers access the Teachers' Standards leading to Qualified Teacher Status.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

This work will be assessed through a portfolio.

Section 1 will be a commentary through which students explain their rationale for the sequence of lessons that they planned, including reference to the literature and class context.
Section 2 will allow the student to demonstrate the application of theoretical and research-based knowledge to a practice context through a reflective commentary and analysis of evidence.

Reading Lists

• EDU8326's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• EDU8326's Timetable