Work, experiences, module choices
Helping you to get involved
Throughout the programme we will encourage you to try new things, to get out there and become involved as mentors, ambassadors, teaching assistants, community activists, and/or as volunteers with a very wide range of organisations which support learning and communities in a myriad of different ways.
We continually flag up chances to be trained and or get experiences, e.g. to work as:
- Coaches – for example with Coachbright UK to support learning and development of less advantaged young people.
- Forest School workers – free all day training event in March 2023.
- Mentors through ‘Plymouth Opportunities’ working with young people in local Secondary Schools.
- Teaching assistants through agency work.
- Volunteers with organisations such as Plymouth Hope a Devon based charity which aims to promote social inclusion by supporting people who may otherwise have become socially excluded', or Special Olympics: a sporting club where people with learning difficulties are able to join with the goal of becoming an SOPD athlete and compete as part of the Special Olympics team.
- A member of a SEN initiative to get experience working with a SEND teaching team and their students.
- Paid interns in various sustainability and community projects.
- Paid workers helping in summer camps helping vulnerable young people.
- TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of other Language/s) introductory courses offered at subsidised rates to our students.
"Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and World better than you found it."
Quote by Marian Edelman
Image shows BA (Hons) Education student Amandine helping to paint BT street boxes around areas of Plymouth to brighten communities in 2021.
Work based learning module
In the second year you get a chance to find the types of placements and work experiences that can challenge and change you. Many students take the time to work in education settings of choice (early years, primary, youth groups, education departments in museums, zoos and wildlife parks, community projects, support groups, etc), or other diverse sites and venues in order to experience different opportunities and to develop a range of transferable skills. We support you all the way, and help with finding the work experiences, and especially with the research project which runs alongside to make meaningful and personal learning from it all.
The aims of the module are to help you:
- Become more critically reflective and self aware
- Develop coping with challenges and change
- Increase your confidence
- Grow and hone your transferable skills
- Think outside the box
- Evolve greater communication skills
- Develop your critical thinking and flexibility
Elective modules
You get to select three modules in your second year, and four in your final year. All of them encourage and develop specific interests which help to advance particular or possible future directions, the following are just four examples:
Enabling Environments
In our third year there is an Early Childhood module, run in conjunction with the Architecture department and a local education site in the community. You literally get to discuss and consider the brief, and then design, build, and transform a space and landscape in order to provide what is needed – for example a therapeutic zone or a safe play site.
In our third year there is an Early Childhood module, run in conjunction with the Architecture department and a local education site in the community. You literally get to discuss and consider the brief, and then design, build, and transform a space and landscape in order to provide what is needed – for example a therapeutic zone or a safe play site.
Voice and Participation in Education and Society
What is the significance of having a voice? Being seen, being heard, being part of making the changes you wish so see in your lives, your communities, and society at large is perhaps the most fundamental transformational power we can experience. How do we help people engage in this, achieve the above, and facilitate it coming to life through Education – especially those least visible, least empowered? This module will often encourage you to become actively involved in some kind of community project alongside it.
What is the significance of having a voice? Being seen, being heard, being part of making the changes you wish so see in your lives, your communities, and society at large is perhaps the most fundamental transformational power we can experience. How do we help people engage in this, achieve the above, and facilitate it coming to life through Education – especially those least visible, least empowered? This module will often encourage you to become actively involved in some kind of community project alongside it.
Wellbeing and Education
A module which is first and foremost all about you: how do you evaluate your wellbeing and understand what it is? How might you take more control of your daily life to ensure you protect, enhance, nurture and develop wellbeing in different aspects of your life? How might what we discuss, look at, and try on this module to foster greater resilience enable us to work with others to do likewise? Learning lessons for life, for joy, for helping others is at the heart of Wellbeing and Education. All of this, however, is also contextualised within our scrutiny of, and questioning, current political, cultural, and social values – 'no [person] is an island'.
Working with a range of Professionals
Working in the service industry, be it in Education, or Health and Social Care, or other services, one will inevitably work with a range of other professionals. This module focuses in particular on the Early Years sector and working with young children. It introduces you to a range of different professional roles, their purposes and boundaries, and helps to evolve a greater picture of how we can work together to meet a child’s social, welfare, and educational needs.
A module which is first and foremost all about you: how do you evaluate your wellbeing and understand what it is? How might you take more control of your daily life to ensure you protect, enhance, nurture and develop wellbeing in different aspects of your life? How might what we discuss, look at, and try on this module to foster greater resilience enable us to work with others to do likewise? Learning lessons for life, for joy, for helping others is at the heart of Wellbeing and Education. All of this, however, is also contextualised within our scrutiny of, and questioning, current political, cultural, and social values – 'no [person] is an island'.
Working with a range of Professionals
Working in the service industry, be it in Education, or Health and Social Care, or other services, one will inevitably work with a range of other professionals. This module focuses in particular on the Early Years sector and working with young children. It introduces you to a range of different professional roles, their purposes and boundaries, and helps to evolve a greater picture of how we can work together to meet a child’s social, welfare, and educational needs.
Lizzie Ellis – third year student
Gender and Difference module
My awareness surrounding human and societal importance felt at this level to be lacking structure and depth of articulation, so this was a fundamental reason why I chose the module of 'Gender and Difference'. It has exceeded my expectations without question. As a mature student my lived experience is of benefit, however it requires greater expansion to progress personally, academically and professionally. I have found that this module has explored valuable conversations on some difficult topics, with Emma not shying away from discussing these. Each session is entertaining and thought provoking with varied presentations to maintain attention, whilst underpinning with historical content and theory and yet still forward thinking. Subject matter is delicately dealt with, all language is explored, all voices heard.
