EDUC1511: Contemporary Issues and Evidence in Education

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• To introduce students to a range of contemporary issues in education and the nature and scope of different forms of evidence that can influence public perception, policy and pedagogic practice in relation to these issues.

• Students will be introduced to contemporary debates in education through guest lectures led by an expert in the field.
• Lecture content will focus on different issues that impact upon or can be addressed via education. Current topics may include analysis of curriculum design, pupils' experience of education, and social structures and systems that influence educational outcomes.
• Curriculum Design: What type of curriculum should be studied at school? Can music education support the 'levelling up' agenda? What is the value of Relationships and Sex Education?
• Pupil Experience: Is a dyslexia diagnosis useful? What is the connection between education, mental health and wellbeing?
• Social Structures and Systems: Does school matter for early childhood education? Do girls really do better than boys at school? Can education change trajectories of social disadvantage?
• Lectures will support student learning of subject-specific knowledge but also seek to provide students with a broader understanding of how these issues could be subject to research. Throughout the lecture series, there will be reference to key ways researchers use evidence, theories and arguments to support their understanding of and positionality towards the issue under consideration and how these sources can influence public perception, policy and practice.
• In this way, students will engage with a range of different evidence sources that those working within education may encounter, for example, blogs, podcasts, news articles, and journal articles. Students are asked to consider the strengths and limitations of these sources, as well as reflecting on how and why teachers, policymakers, parents, and other educational influencers may view and value these different sources.
• Hence, not only does this module introduce students to the variety of academics working within the department here at the School of Education in Durham University, it also positions education as an academic field of research enquiry and considers how the issues we research from an academic perspective are interpreted by other stakeholders invested in the educative process and translated into policy and practice.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will develop knowledge and understanding of a range of contemporary issues in education.
• Students will develop an understanding of what counts as evidence in education.
• Students will develop knowledge of the various stakeholders that can influence education and understand how they may value and utilise different types of evidence to inform policy and practice.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students will develop an understanding of how evidence can be used to support theory and practice in education.
• Students will be introduced to and learn how to use appropriate frameworks for the evaluation of evidence in education.
• Students will develop their oral communication skills in contributing to class debate on contemporary issues and evidence in education.
• Students will develop their written communication skills in producing academic writing on contemporary issues and evidence in education.

Key Skills:

• Students will learn to reference, use and evaluate a range of evidence sources that they may encounter in contemporary debates, including academic and non-academic sources, to arbitrate between differing perspectives.
• Students will begin to develop the ability to evaluate the arguments of others where these ideas are underpinned by personal experience, theory or empirical research.
• Students will develop the ability to construct and present written and oral arguments.

• 10 x 2 hour lectures/workshops. Lectures will introduce students to a contemporary issue in education and will be facilitated by experts in the field from the School of Education. Each lecture will be followed with an active consideration of, and debate on, the presented conteporary issue through a discussion-based workshop to draw out and build upon students' understanding, analysis and evaluation of lecture content.
• Lectures will be supported by preparatory and follow-up readings and a learning task that students will complete in preparation for seminars.
• 10 x 1 hour seminars. Learning in lectures will be complemented with skills-building seminars where students are introduced to the academic community and key features of academic practice through expanding study skills, developing critical thinking, using marking criteria for self- and peer-assessment and preparing for assignments.

Formative will include an annotated bibliography of 6-7 sources on module topic as well as feedback on an essay plan outlining ideas/argument intended to be used as the basis for the summative essay.

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