| CODE | EDS5029 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Educating for a Challenging World in the Primary School | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Education Studies | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit focuses on the issue of delivering learning to primary school pupils and how the teacher assists the learner to monitor his/her own progress. This process contributes to the formation of communities in educational spaces that prepare the child for an active and contributing role in society. Teacher-pupil relationships along with learning paradigms are explored within the context of the classroom and the broad curriculum. This study unit presents prospective primary teachers with issues related to the day to day life of the child in a primary school context such as the creation of positive learning environments, class management issues, diversity, participation, and individual differences. All of these are explored against a background of learner differences and needs, diversity, and response to diversity backed up by proven psychological paradigms that explain such differences in the human development trajectory. The response of the educator and the educational system are examined such that the delivery of the curriculum to the primary school child is explored and optimised. In addition, concepts of ability, achievement, standardised assessment, grading, and interpretation of results are discussed and amplified. The unit focuses on important developments on both the epistemic (knowledge-focused) and value-focused (ethical, justice-related, and moral-developmental) wings of philosophy of education, and the ways these come together in important problems of life, such as the polarization of public life and breakdown of public knowledge, and questions about how primary schools can do their jobs in a changing world. Study-Unit Aims: This study-unit aims to discuss those practical professional skills, attitudes and dispositions of teaching informed by the latest educational theories. The interdisciplinary lectures will help students focus their thinking on the interplay of curricular learning and educational issues in classrooms and beyond. The aim of this study-unit is to help students develop a capacity for critically understanding these issues to examine the curriculum and its implications to a rapidly changing world, and all it entails as a changing social construct, shaped by a multiplicity of forces. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Characterise, through the ideas presented during lectures and readings, assumptions about curricula, pedagogies; - Describe assumptions of curricula and about pedagogies; - Identify how curricula and pedagogies are constructed through various relations developed in education; - Illustrate through the ideas presented during lectures and readings, assumptions about learning communities (communities, schools and classrooms); - Review assumptions of the learning communities; - Express how the learning community is constructed through various relations developed by the different stakeholders; - Discuss various learning communities theories; - Characterise various conditions that influence the learning communities; 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Identify the ideas presented during lectures and readings, by listing them. - List the assumptions made about the curricula and pedagogies explained; - Analyse curricula and pedagogies by listing the various relations developed between them in the area of education; - List the assumptions made about learning communities (communities, schools and classrooms); - List the assumptions made about learning communities; - Differentiate the various relations developed by the different stakeholders; - Analyse various learning communities theories; - Distinguish between the various conditions that influence the learning communities; Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: Woolfolk, A. (2016). Educational Psychology (13th edition/global). Pearson. Curren, R. (Ed.). (2022). Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Taylor & Francis. Supplementary Readings: McInerney, D. M., & McInerney, V. (2006). Educational psychology : constructing learning (4th ed.). Frenchs Forest, N.S.W: Pearson Education Australia. Reid, R., Ortiz Lienemann, T., & Hagaman, J. L. Strategy Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities. New York: Guilford Aubrey, K., & Riley, A. (2020). Understanding and using challenging educational theories. Sage. Friesen, J. W. (2014). Philosophical, Ideological, and Theoretical Perspectives on Education, Gerald L. Gutek (2014). Boston, MA: Pearson. 452 p, including index. Open Access Library Journal, 1(1), 1-2. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Maria Stephanie Bugeja (Co-ord.) Manwel Joseph Ellul |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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