Critical Approaches to Childrens Literature

This course is aimed at applicants who already have knowledge of and interest in children's literature and who want to develop expertise in the subject at masters' level. In this route students will meet old favourites and make new exciting acquaintances. They will be introduced to the most recent debates on the nature and social function of this controversial and multifaceted kind of literature. They will also be provided with the tools for critical assessment of books written and marketed for a young audience. Students will follow modules covering: researching picturebooks and their readers; texts, contexts and childhoods; and what makes this Masters in Children's Literature.

As well as considering picture-books, poetry, media texts and writing for children, this thematic route concentrates on a wide range of fiction for children, including the 'classics', texts for very young readers, international literature and novels for young adults. Close textual study and the history of children's literature are embedded within the route, which also concerns itself with exciting new texts, (sometimes using sound and image) produced by ever changing new technologies. Qualitative action research involving empirical work with children on visual literacy will be undertaken during the route. Participants are encouraged to keep a working journal and to include references to their own reading autobiographies.

The route focuses throughout on different representations of childhood in the texts that are studied and examines what is meant by the contested term 'children' literature'. Participants will be expected to engage with some of the key debates in the field and to consider a range of theoretical perspectives - from Romanticism to reader-response theory; gender issues to post-modernism; historical studies to new historicism; sociocultural viewpoints to semiotics - as well as examining critically views of young readers and their reading choices.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the programme, students will have:

• a comprehensive understanding of research techniques, and a thorough knowledge of the literature applicable to their specific educational domain;
• demonstrated originality in the application of knowledge, together with a practical understanding of how research and enquiry are used to create and interpret knowledge in their field;
• shown abilities in the critical evaluation of current research and research techniques and methodologies;
• demonstrated self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems, and acted autonomously in the planning and implementation of research.

Continuing

Students wishing to continue from the Master of Education to PhD or EdD are required to achieve a mark of 70 or higher for the thesis.

• Module 1: Texts, Contexts and Childhood
• Module 2: Perspectives on Children's Literature
• Module 3: Visual Texts
• Module 4: Texts and Readers

The course is assessed through three assignments, each designed to be personally rewarding as well as professionally enlightening and intellectually challenging: a theorised reading autobiography, focusing on texts for children with particular reference to changing constructions of childhood; an empirical study of children responding to a selected picturebook; and a thesis on a topic of the student's own choosing, which may be either a purely literary study or a small empirical research project.  Students joining in the second year of the course do the thesis but not the essays.

• Magistr (Master's Degree) at Pass level. Diploma Specialista (completed post-1991) with a minimum overall grade of good or 4/5 Bachelor's from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and other prestigious institutions with an overall grade of 4/5 Bologna Bachelor's from other institutions with an overall grade of 5/5, Excellent
• Diploma Specialista (completed post-1991) with a minimum overall grade of Excellent or 5/5 Bachelor's from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and other prestigious institutions with an overall grade of 5/5
• IELTS (Academic) 7.5
• TOEFL Internet Score 110
• £50 application fee
• First Academic Reference
• Second Academic Reference
• Transcript
• Personal Reference. This is only required if you are applying for the Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

Extra Materials 

Please note: If you are applying for the MPhil or the 2-year MEd, please complete the task below. If you have done or are currently doing the PGCE at the Faculty, it is not necessary to upload this task with your application.

Please write an essay or a piece of original critical research around 2,000 words. Choose a children's or young adult text (picturebook, poetry collection, fairy tale, novel, film, comic) that would allow an interesting discussion. (Do not choose texts which may portray young people, but are not explicitly addressed to young readers, such as To Kill a Mockingbird). Please avoid obvious choices, for instance, Roald Dahl or J K Rowling, unless you are confident that you have something original to say about them. You are expected to use a reasonable number of critical sources to support your argument.

Focus on one or two aspects of the text and explore them in depth rather than trying to cover many different aspects. Some features that you may want to examine, include, but are not limited to:

• the socio-historical and literary context
• the genre-specific features of the text (fantasy, adventure, boarding-school story, dystopia)
• ideology and intention (for instance, gender, race, class)
• narrative structure, characterisation and narrative perspective
• the use of language
• the implied audience
• for a picturebook or graphic novel, the interaction of word and image

You are welcome to draw on your childhood memories of the text or your experience of using it with children; however, this should not be the primary focus of your essay. 

• Global Education
• Gates Cambridge Scholarships