STUDY

This mandatory module acquaints students with the academic and interdisciplinary study of childhood. It asks students to grapple with the central question of how childhood is defined, how answers to that question have always been historically, culturally and geographically specific, and what the shifting construction of such answers might tell us. The module traces the evolution of ideas about the nature of childhood in the modern period and their consequences for the legal and political frameworks, social structures, cultural contexts and lived bodily experiences of children over the past century and a half. The module explores the origins of modern understandings of childhood and outlines how changing constructions of childhood have impacted on children’s lived realities, including key legislation and regulatory frameworks such as the UNCRC.  

This seminar-based module provides students with a critical understanding of the conceptual and theoretical foundations of childhood studies. The module examines the academic development of the interdisciplinary study of childhood and seeks to critically examine the key concepts and their use in conceptual understandings of children’s everyday lives. The module gets to the root of how we learn about childhood, what constructions and assumptions influence our understanding of childhood, and the implications of how this knowledge impacts practice.

This module is designed to provide a fundamental grounding in a range of appropriate research methods and research skills for postgraduate students, along with the opportunity to specialise in more advanced training in both quantitative and qualitative research, ethical frameworks and in the practical application of research techniques specific to students’ areas of study. The module will provide a solid foundation in methodological theories and paradigms; research ethics and an overview of the major research approaches, including quantitative and qualitative research.  

The Independent Project is designed to provide students with an opportunity to undertake a significant and substantial research and learning activity and to demonstrate the ability to work independently. Students use their critical and analytical skills to develop a dissertation in a relevant and appropriate topic supported empirically and theoretically through historical and current academic research. It provides students with an opportunity to carry out a comprehensive investigation on a topic of their choice and seeks to equip them with the skills of detailed project planning, design, analysis and critical valuation.  The module aims to provide students with an opportunity to apply the in-depth knowledge of and understanding of child-centred approaches appropriate for undertaking ethical projects to investigate experiences of childhood.  The opportunity to explore and apply critical reflexive knowledge within the research context will also be evident.

Section 20 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 places a duty on governing bodies to designate a member of staff (the designated teacher) as having the responsibility to promote  educational achievement of looked-after children, including those aged between 16 and 18 who are registered pupils at the school, and to ensure that the designated teacher undertakes appropriate training (section 20(2)). The 2017 Children and Social Work Act extends this duty to children with care experience. Furthermore, the Children and Families Act 2014 requires councils in England to appoint a Virtual School Head to discharge the local authority’s duty to promote the educational achievement of its children in care (CiC).  This module has been developed in collaboration with the Suffolk Virtual School and would be appropriate for Designated Teachers and others working more broadly with children in care/looked after children. The module provides an opportunity to develop a critical, theoretical understanding of educational provisions for children with care experience.  

This course explores the theories, issues, and debates associated with social justice, children’s rights and globalization. It aims to provide students with appropriate theoretical and analytical tools for analysing and understanding complex social situations, characterised by the necessity to mediate between different cultural perspectives. Students will analyse how current frameworks – including institutions, values, assumptions, and actions – affect the economic, political, and cultural structures shaping our lives. Social justice can be understood as a general process of creating sustainable communities of inclusion, diversity, and equity. At the most basic level, it recognizes that social justice projects can have global impacts even when they occur on the local level. Thus, we will investigate how decisions made locally may have global significance.  

This module is taught with partners from around the world; all partner institutions use a common syllabus, and all the students will discuss and share their ideas on a specific Internet site (NING). While exploring the course materials at University of Suffolk, we will be engaging in dialog with students in other institutions abroad who are also taking this course in their home institutions. 

Children’s literature is a vibrant and rapidly growing field of academic study encompassing a variety of genres and a wide range of child/adult concerns. With its own journals and critical literature, the field brings together scholarly perspectives from a diverse range of subjects and discipline backgrounds. On the module, students will be invited to explore a selection of children’s literature across the genre’s development, from the ‘golden age’ of nineteenth-century classics to contemporary examples from the twenty-first century. Students will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of contextual issues and current debates in the field, analysing children’s stories using theories from literature, education, cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. The module focuses on the criticism and practice of writing prose for children in the areas of middle-grade (8-12 yrs) and young-adult fiction (12-18 yrs), enabling students to respond to scholarly debates and develop their own creative work in progress.  

This module explores the risks and dangers faced by children in the British world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and corresponding attempts to increase and extend child protection. Whilst the period witnessed the increased sentimentalisation of notions about childhood, it was also characterised by a number of dangers that posed particular risks to those below the age of majority, including empire, war, poverty, poor health, neglect and abuse. This module will consider how age shaped children’s exposure to the risks of the period, how the British state, voluntary organisations, families, carers and others responded to these challenges and the resulting framework of rights, welfare legislation and oversight that emerged. 

This module explores how culture represents and shapes children’s bodies, and also examines how embodied subjects are themselves able to act on and influence the culture in which they live. Within this module, students are encouraged to view the body as simultaneously biological and social, a site of structure and agency and as a location through which wider social processes, discourses and culture can be explored. Students will consider how the corporeal body is used to define childhood and how explanations of children’s bodies, previously considered within the context of normative biological development, are instead at the heart of a theoretical framework emphasising the social construction of childhood and the cultural and historical variability of meanings surrounding children’s bodies. Students will also be encouraged to explore the physical body as a site of agency, part of individual self-identity and subject to use as an expressive form.   

This module provides an opportunity to develop a critical understanding of the theories of expressive arts that underpin their practical application in supporting child development, learning and teaching, counselling, collaborative projects with families and communities and research. The role and function of creativity and creative arts in social-emotional development of children will be discussed, pointing out the importance of positive psychology and strengths-based approach in supporting mental health of children, encouraging participation and facilitating inclusion. Therapeutic effects of the arts and their main principles such as expression, reflection, projection, embodiment, play, externalisation and transformation will be explored.

This mandatory module acquaints students with the academic and interdisciplinary study of childhood. It asks students to grapple with the central question of how childhood is defined, how answers to that question have always been historically, culturally and geographically specific, and what the shifting construction of such answers might tell us. The module traces the evolution of ideas about the nature of childhood in the modern period and their consequences for the legal and political frameworks, social structures, cultural contexts and lived bodily experiences of children over the past century and a half. The module explores the origins of modern understandings of childhood and outlines how changing constructions of childhood have impacted on children’s lived realities, including key legislation and regulatory frameworks such as the UNCRC.  

This seminar-based module provides students with a critical understanding of the conceptual and theoretical foundations of childhood studies. The module examines the academic development of the interdisciplinary study of childhood and seeks to critically examine the key concepts and their use in conceptual understandings of children’s everyday lives. The module gets to the root of how we learn about childhood, what constructions and assumptions influence our understanding of childhood, and the implications of how this knowledge impacts practice.

This module is designed to provide a fundamental grounding in a range of appropriate research methods and research skills for postgraduate students, along with the opportunity to specialise in more advanced training in both quantitative and qualitative research, ethical frameworks and in the practical application of research techniques specific to students’ areas of study. The module will provide a solid foundation in methodological theories and paradigms; research ethics and an overview of the major research approaches, including quantitative and qualitative research.  

The Independent Project is designed to provide students with an opportunity to undertake a significant and substantial research and learning activity and to demonstrate the ability to work independently. Students use their critical and analytical skills to develop a dissertation in a relevant and appropriate topic supported empirically and theoretically through historical and current academic research. It provides students with an opportunity to carry out a comprehensive investigation on a topic of their choice and seeks to equip them with the skills of detailed project planning, design, analysis and critical valuation.  The module aims to provide students with an opportunity to apply the in-depth knowledge of and understanding of child-centred approaches appropriate for undertaking ethical projects to investigate experiences of childhood.  The opportunity to explore and apply critical reflexive knowledge within the research context will also be evident.

Section 20 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 places a duty on governing bodies to designate a member of staff (the designated teacher) as having the responsibility to promote  educational achievement of looked-after children, including those aged between 16 and 18 who are registered pupils at the school, and to ensure that the designated teacher undertakes appropriate training (section 20(2)). The 2017 Children and Social Work Act extends this duty to children with care experience. Furthermore, the Children and Families Act 2014 requires councils in England to appoint a Virtual School Head to discharge the local authority’s duty to promote the educational achievement of its children in care (CiC).  This module has been developed in collaboration with the Suffolk Virtual School and would be appropriate for Designated Teachers and others working more broadly with children in care/looked after children. The module provides an opportunity to develop a critical, theoretical understanding of educational provisions for children with care experience.  

This course explores the theories, issues, and debates associated with social justice, children’s rights and globalization. It aims to provide students with appropriate theoretical and analytical tools for analysing and understanding complex social situations, characterised by the necessity to mediate between different cultural perspectives. Students will analyse how current frameworks – including institutions, values, assumptions, and actions – affect the economic, political, and cultural structures shaping our lives. Social justice can be understood as a general process of creating sustainable communities of inclusion, diversity, and equity. At the most basic level, it recognizes that social justice projects can have global impacts even when they occur on the local level. Thus, we will investigate how decisions made locally may have global significance.  

This module is taught with partners from around the world; all partner institutions use a common syllabus, and all the students will discuss and share their ideas on a specific Internet site (NING). While exploring the course materials at University of Suffolk, we will be engaging in dialog with students in other institutions abroad who are also taking this course in their home institutions. 

Children’s literature is a vibrant and rapidly growing field of academic study encompassing a variety of genres and a wide range of child/adult concerns. With its own journals and critical literature, the field brings together scholarly perspectives from a diverse range of subjects and discipline backgrounds. On the module, students will be invited to explore a selection of children’s literature across the genre’s development, from the ‘golden age’ of nineteenth-century classics to contemporary examples from the twenty-first century. Students will have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of contextual issues and current debates in the field, analysing children’s stories using theories from literature, education, cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. The module focuses on the criticism and practice of writing prose for children in the areas of middle-grade (8-12 yrs) and young-adult fiction (12-18 yrs), enabling students to respond to scholarly debates and develop their own creative work in progress.  

This module explores the risks and dangers faced by children in the British world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and corresponding attempts to increase and extend child protection. Whilst the period witnessed the increased sentimentalisation of notions about childhood, it was also characterised by a number of dangers that posed particular risks to those below the age of majority, including empire, war, poverty, poor health, neglect and abuse. This module will consider how age shaped children’s exposure to the risks of the period, how the British state, voluntary organisations, families, carers and others responded to these challenges and the resulting framework of rights, welfare legislation and oversight that emerged. 

This module explores how culture represents and shapes children’s bodies, and also examines how embodied subjects are themselves able to act on and influence the culture in which they live. Within this module, students are encouraged to view the body as simultaneously biological and social, a site of structure and agency and as a location through which wider social processes, discourses and culture can be explored. Students will consider how the corporeal body is used to define childhood and how explanations of children’s bodies, previously considered within the context of normative biological development, are instead at the heart of a theoretical framework emphasising the social construction of childhood and the cultural and historical variability of meanings surrounding children’s bodies. Students will also be encouraged to explore the physical body as a site of agency, part of individual self-identity and subject to use as an expressive form.   

This module provides an opportunity to develop a critical understanding of the theories of expressive arts that underpin their practical application in supporting child development, learning and teaching, counselling, collaborative projects with families and communities and research. The role and function of creativity and creative arts in social-emotional development of children will be discussed, pointing out the importance of positive psychology and strengths-based approach in supporting mental health of children, encouraging participation and facilitating inclusion. Therapeutic effects of the arts and their main principles such as expression, reflection, projection, embodiment, play, externalisation and transformation will be explored.