This core module focuses on international education development, introducing you to historical and present projects and key organisations, policies and practices.

We will consider the impact of these on social stratification, and the ways in which education policy can influence worldwide social justice.

Gaining practical research experience is central to this module. You will work alongside your cohort peers and engage in an action research project, which is praxis-oriented and involves the community or group under study.

Your community, group or organisation will be advocating for social justice in education. Working in this research environment, you’ll explore education issues for particular populations within the wider context of global justice.

You will gain valuable experience as a researcher while also improving your theoretical knowledge of the field. The module’s assessment is via a 7,000 word paper, which may be suitable for journal publication or presentation at conference.

How does education promote or inhibit social justice?

In this module we draw upon a variety of approaches to social justice, engaging with theories and issues that help us to develop critical understanding around this fundamental question.

Your own professional environment, those of your cohort peers, and other education settings will be used to gather evidence and provide a contextual perspective to the learning.

For those of you with a professional role centred on the promotion of social justice in education, this module provides an opportunity to apply newly acquired insight to the development and improvement of your own current practice.

This module will also see you progress as an autonomous researcher, and assessment is via a 7,000 word paper suitable for publication in an academic journal.

On a practical level, you will enhance your knowledge of current work in the field while developing your own research capabilities.

This module aims to explore and examine the relationship between education and social movements/change. It pays particular attention to educational and social (in)equalities relating to race, gender, environment, migration, poverty, peace and democracy (freedoms). The module explores the economic, social, political, environmental and policy context of movements and campaigns for improving educational justice across different global case studies/campaigns.

It gives students an opportunity to:

• look into how social movements, and those practising educational activism, can contribute to educational change;
• how social movement learning takes place;
• how social movements use different spaces and practices of education to push their agenda for social justice.

The module will equip students with critical skills and knowledge to analayse social movement dynamics and how they affect the educational landscape, initiatives and policy.

This is where the fundamentals, practicalities and essentials of research are uncovered; the Researching Social Justice module is your practical guide to improving your competency as a researcher.

You will encounter and use a variety of research methods and methodologies, which are used to generate qualitative and quantitative data.

The module will see you delve deep into the philosophy and theory of research, and you’ll explore the epistemological principles behind research techniques and their associated processes.

Over the course of the module, and applying what you have learned, you’ll write a research proposal in preparation for your thesis in Part Two. The proposal will be submitted as the module’s primary assessment, alongside several short papers (totalling 5,500 words).

The Social Justice in Institutions and Organisations module is your chance to develop your understanding of, and critically appraise, social justice as a concept and as a characteristic of institutions.

This module invites you to question the nature of social justice as applied to any given institution – and to consider how theories of social justice may vary across institutions.

We will identify the ways institutions measure their success in complying with their own definitions of social justice. And we’ll explore the means by which they may seek to become more socially just.

An integral part of your journey as a developing researcher, this compulsory module is also an excellent opportunity to connect your own working practice with relevant literature - and to hone in on aspects of social justice that most interest you.

You will enhance your ability to theorise, conceptualise, analyse and articulate facets of your own professional practice.

Undertaken during your first year of PhD studies, the module is assessed via a number of short assignments (5,000 words in total). These enable you to develop your research and writing skills and they prepare the ground for year two when assessment is via longer publishable papers suitable for academic journals.