PGDE Secondary (Business Education)

Our new one-year PGDE Secondary (Business Education) course will prepare you to teach business education in Scottish secondary schools and beyond, providing you with an internationally recognised secondary teaching qualification.

If you are passionate about business education, especially with a social justice, sustainability and health and wellbeing agenda, then there has never been a more important time to learn the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to enable you to transform young lives as you learn how to evaluate the social, ethical, and global factors that affect local, national, and multinational organisations.

As a graduate of our unique course, you will help to prepare young people to face the challenges of 21st century citizenship in these fast-changing times.   

Why QMU?

• Guaranteed employment for one year following graduation: Scottish students are guaranteed paid employment for one year in a Scottish secondary school as a Business Education teacher.

• Longstanding expertise, with a strong focus on advancing social justice: Study at a university with a 145-year history of teaching for social justice. Social justice underpins QMU’s world view, and our new Business Education PGDE offers a fresh and vibrant approach to learning to teach in Scotland.

• Staff expertise: Our staff have subject and professional knowledge based on their expertise from teaching in schools and in initial teacher education in university settings. Collectively we have many years of experience in supporting students entering the teaching profession and strong links with the Queen Margaret Business School, with its emphasis on the need for ethical, social and ecological responsibility in business.

• Range of learning experiences: As well as offering you the opportunity to learn how to teach Business Education in a classroom context, we will enable you to engage creatively with the role of outdoor learning in the school curriculum, gaining experience in our dedicated campus Outdoor Learning Hub.

• Make a difference: Learn to teach a subject with the power to shape young persons’ lives and society. As a graduate of this course. you will be an advocate of sustainable business practices that help support social justice, sustainable lifestyles, and economic and social wellbeing. Our course will support you in fostering a global business mindset to enable you to teach and transform lives within our local school communities.

• Professional accreditation/registration: The course is accredited by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). As a graduate you will be eligible to register with the GTCS.

PGDE Secondary (Business): More information and what you will achieve

The PGDE Secondary (Business Education) course will engage you in a critical understanding of contemporary ‘real world’ issues. 

You will learn how to underpin your inclusive teaching practices with key themes of social justice, sustainability and health and wellbeing; and consider critically children’s rights and how to plan for inclusive practices which enable all young people to participate.

More generally, you will learn how to engage young persons in ICT for business contexts, in effective communications strategies, and develop their financial awareness and understanding of human relations strategies as well as their knowledge of enterprising life and employability skills all necessary for participation in twenty-first century global citizenship.

Researching theories of leadership and organisational learning and change will enable you to engage young persons in the skills of independent learning, research, critical analysis and problem solving.  

You will also learn about the role you can play as a business education teacher to drive forward the discipline within its contemporary social, cultural, and political contexts.

Professional enquiry is an important aspect of the teacher’s role. On our course we will teach you how to conduct research in your classroom to enable you to make evidence-based decisions in support of pupils’ learning.

How will I be taught?

Structure and exit award

PGDE (120 credits) with the possibility of 80 credits at Masters’ Level 11. You must complete the full PGDE.

Teaching, learning and assessment

The course is structured between 18 weeks of teaching at QMU University (which is a mixture of mostly face-to-face and some blended learning) and 18 weeks split between two secondary school placements.

Teaching consists of independent and collaborative learning in workshops. You will engage in research and produce three written assignments and one Individual presentation all of which will be either assessed at Levels 11 (Master’s degree level) or Level 10. Teaching practice is assessed in schools.

Assessments are designed to:

• optimise accessibility for students with a range of strengths and abilities

• provide variety of opportunity to be challenged and to excel

• engage students in the importance of being literate and communicative in a range of formats and media

• model and demonstrate assessment procedures for student teachers so that they can incorporate this into their own teaching practice.  For example: the importance of assessment; transparency of approaches to assessment, value of providing a range of assessment formats, and ways and means of providing feedback and feed-forward.

The PGDE shares the pedagogic approach of the other courses in QMU’s Division of Psychology, Sociology and Education, foregrounding:

• critical thinking

• student collaboration

• independent learning

• involvement with global real-world issues

• interprofessional, interdisciplinary learning

• practical experience, experiential learning and critical reflection

• practical upskilling in food and textiles

• peer/group work

• enquiry-based learning

• debate and contention

• outdoor learning activities

Placements

Placements are an invaluable way of building on your theoretical learning and by applying this in practice, seeing the evidence of how teaching Business Education can benefit young people.

You will complete an 18-week placement in two different secondary schools in Scotland.

Placements are generated through the GTCS Student Placement System (SPS) and are based on a student’s term time address. Students may be required to travel within a 90 minutes radius to their placement and are responsible for meeting their own travel costs.

Please see the 'Entry requirements and application information' tab for information on costs related to placements. 

Teaching hours and attendance

This is a full-time, demanding course, lasting 36 weeks in total, split into 18 weeks of campus teaching and online learning and 18 weeks on placement.

Class sizes

The expected class size for this PGDE will be  approximately 20 students.

Teaching staff

You can read more about the teaching staff on this course at the bottom of this page. Please note that teaching staff is subject to change.

Modules

• Reflective and Critical Practice (Placement modules) (40 credits): This module has a particular focus on professional values and the roles and responsibilities required of a teacher in relation to the 2021 GTCS Standards (SPR). This module is assessed by observation of teaching practice in Schools at SCQF Level 10.

• Business Education in the 21st Century (40 credits): This module aims to equip you with the skills to teach BGE and the senior curriculum within Business Education departments in a secondary school context and to engage critically with research to inform your approaches to transformative learning in schools. Assignments are research based and one is a recorded presentation, with the other being a written submission. Both elements must be passed to achieve this module.

• Education: Theory, Practice & Research (1) (20 credits): This module will develop your critical and reflective skills in the context of classroom-based research and enquiry through building a literature review as a focus for your practice-based research.

• Education: Theory, Practice & Research (2) (20 credits): This module will develop your skills in conducting classroom research.  You will create a research plan for classroom research and present this to a live audience.

• NB The modules listed are correct at time of posting (October 2023) but may be subject to change. In the event that modules change, QMU will seek to use reasonable endeavours to ensure that there is no detrimental impact on students.