StudyQA — PhD: Learning and Learning Contexts

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Description

The School of Education offers wide and varied opportunities to undertake research programmes that will support the growth of research skills and build on subject knowledge. With over 100 lecturing and research staff and dedicated research centres, our School of Education is one of the largest research-led schools of education in the UK with a distinguished reputation for excellence in our research and teaching practice both nationally and internationally. We have a history of 5 star rated research and in the 2008 Research Excellence Exercise (RAE), 80% of our work was recognised as being of international quality. You will undertake advanced research under the supervision and guidance of an experienced member of the School of Education staff.

The Professional Doctorate in Learning and Learning Contexts will be of interest to anyone who wants to enhance their critical understanding of contemporary learning theory and pedagogic practice. The course is aimed at those wishing to pursue research that can be applied to their own teaching and learning contexts. Subject modules explore the cultures and contexts of learning and theoretical perspectives on teaching and learning. From the outset, this course will provide opportunities to develop and apply ideas toward students' own research goals including a special study in Year 1.

Learning and Transformation: Theoretical Perspectives on Teaching and Learning

This key module introduces the main critical perspectives on learning within different, related contexts. It adopts a cross-disciplinary and problem-based approach and will engage the students in the study of the following areas:

* Cognitive and psychological theories of teaching and learning
* Social contexts of learning and learning theories
* Policy and discourse contexts of learning

This relational approach is crucial to the fundamental focus of the EdD that research on education and learning involves a new research culture and partnership, with a professional and evidence based practice as its core.

Special Studies in Learning: Theory, Practice or Policy

This module brings together the key strands of the professional doctorate in Learning and Learning Contexts theories, practices and policies and relates them to the particular context within which students are to carry out their dissertation. As such the module will mainly reflect the particular research literature relating to the individual students (or group of students) research interest and the methodological issues concerning their individual research. These will be linked to the
overarching themes developed within previous modules on the professional doctorate in Learning and Learning Contexts. Participants will receive training in case study methods and will be expected to discuss with other students the significance of their studies in terms of the insights gained about learning, learning contexts and policy as it impacts on contexts. Areas in which enquiries may occur will include networked environments, medical education, subject specialist settings, informal settings and others.

Cultures and Contexts of Learning

This module is designed to provide knowledge and understanding of specific, local contexts of learning. It will deal with spaces and environments of learning, their social and material technologies. It will provide theoretical resources and occasions to examine spaces of learning. The module will give attention to the wider institutional and systemic contexts
of spaces of learning, giving attention to their genealogies and structures. The module will make the frameworks for description, analysis and critique of learning spaces explicit. The module content will include:

* Frameworks of description, analysis and critique
* Environments, spaces and technologies: mapping sites of learning
* Historical and contemporary perspectives on sites of learning
* Learning spaces and culture: power/knowledge, cultural differences, inclusion/exclusion
* Socio-cultural activity theory, related and conflicting discourses

Specialist Research Module: Researching Learning

In this module participants will clarify their research questions in the area of learning and relate them to methodological choices and connected issues of research design. To inform this process participants will consider critically a number of research approaches used in research on learning and learners. Participants will also be encouraged to examine relationships between research and policy and research and practice in order to consider the implications of
their own work and how it might be used by different audiences.