Postgraduate Certificate Education (Innovation in Learning and Teaching)

The Postgraduate Certificate Education (Innovation in Learning and Teaching) aims to develop knowledgeable and reflective professionals who are able to draw on evidence-based practice in ways that will impact on the workplace and on outcomes for the children and young people in those services.

It has been designed to provide opportunities for students to develop their professional knowledge, skills and understanding and most importantly their capacity for critical thinking. The course aims to develop professionals who are able to engage with the complexities of this area of work, often managing demanding workloads in multi-agency setting whilst still prioritising the interests of the children and families they work with.

The Postgraduate Certificate Education allows professionals at all stages of their career to develop further their understanding of a wide range of educational issues, debates and concepts.

The flexible nature of the course allows students to combine modules to reflect their own range of interests, culminating in the opportunity to produce a dissertation that has both practical and theoretical relevance. What's more, course content is constantly refreshed to ensure it makes reference to key current educational debates.

Students can either take one 60-credit module - Promoting Excellence in Learning and Development - or take two modules from the following list:

• Promoting Excellence in Learning and Teaching - 30 credits

• Innovation in Curriculum Design - 30 credits

• Developing Digital Competence - 30 credits

• Working with Diversity - 30 credits

• Professional Learning - 30 credits

• Professional Learning through Action Research - 30 credits

• Working with More Able and Talented Learners - 30 credits

• Developing Learning in Organisation - 30 credits

• Developing professional practices: numeracy and maths? - 30 credits

• Developing professional practices: literacy and communication? - 30 credits

• Investigating Language, Literacy and Numeracy for Learning - 30 credits

• International Perspectives on Early Childhood - 30 credits

Teaching

Each module is supported by 30 hours of lectures (10 x 3 hours) over a ten week period. The constituent modules are constantly refreshed to ensure they make reference to key current educational debates. Lectures are frequently delivered by key professionals in the field, and resources and reading lists are supplied to scaffold further self-study. There is a biennial opportunity to take part on a field study visit to the Netherlands. 

Assessment

The standard assessment mode for the constituent modules (30 credits) is a 5000 word assignment. The point of focus for this assignment is generally defined by the student, in negotiation with the module leader.

At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.

If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.