The key purpose of this module is to facilitate your academic, personal and professional development. It will offer an opportunity to build upon your existing knowledge, skills and understanding and will encourage you to adopt a positive approach to your new course by developing skills of communication and presentational methods. You will be introduced to the purpose and development of reflective practice, professional development profiles, critical thinking skills, referencing, interpretation of data and the development of an academic argument. This module will build upon your existing personal, academic and professional knowledge, skills and understanding to encourage you to adopt a positive and reflective approach to your new course.

Key concepts covered in this module include:

Principles and approaches to reflective practice

Observation and development of own professional practice

Roles and responsibilities (including safeguarding)

Introduction to Academic Skills (embedded throughout the course)

Personal career aspirations

Produce a reflection in the form of an e-collage.

You should reflect on aspects of your personal, professional and academic development using key educational issues and good ethical practice as a benchmark. You should reflect on the development of your professional practice, including analysis of transferable/personal skills and how these have impacted in relation to your professional practice. The collage can be in an e-format of your choosing, in consultation with your tutor. This section of the assessment carries a word- equivalence. LO1 LO2

Produce an action plan for the development of professional and transferable skills over the duration of the course.

The action plan can be any chosen format including a table and be underpinned with relevant theory. This section of the assessment carries a word- equivalence. LO3

The teaching, learning and assessment strategy has been carefully developed for this module. It recognises that you come to the programme through a different route to “traditional” students and your learning needs to be supported, in a different way. We recognise that you bring with you a wealth of practical experience and detailed knowledge of specific contexts to share with others, and this vast pool of practical experience will be used to promote discussion and debate, which will build upon existing knowledge to encourage reflection and critical thought. The methods are designed to provide practical contexts for the analysis of contemporary issues and problems of a practical nature. The following strategies will be adopted to ensure that students have a supportive teaching and learning environment, providing a range of learning opportunities. A blended learning approach will provide both face-to-face and virtual opportunities.

Work Related Learning – You will be required to reflect on values, practices, assumptions and work-place policies. Work-based activities help students to establish connections between the workplace and issues raised by the programme.

Lectures - You will be given lectures which will provide theoretical underpinning on key educational concepts. These may take the form of face-to-face, digital or virtual sessions, dependent on the Blended Learning policy.

Tutorials – You will be given the opportunity to discuss work-related and academic concerns in small group tutorials and individual tutorials. This will support the development of theoretical understanding.

Guided reading and supported self-study – You will be provided with booklists and reading tasks in order to enable you to engage with relevant and appropriate debates.

This module will also provide opportunities for you to:

work with others

develop interpersonal skills

demonstrate the capacity to plan, share goals, and work as a member of a team

communicate and present oral and written arguments

Your College VLE will be used as a support resource for candidates by providing flexible learning, especially during reading week with access to materials on-line to enable candidates to manage their time more effectively and to improve staff/ student communication through bulletin boards. Your VLE will enable you to have access to course materials, lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations and reading lists, to enable you to manage your time more effectively. Your VLE offers opportunities to engage in group work and independent learning by the use of such things as synchronous/asynchronous discussion boards, video links, blogs and wikis.

1. Demonstrate knowledge of underlying principles and evaluation of your professional role and responsibilities, including transferable skills. - KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING, ANALYSIS

2. Reflect on your own practice using key educational issues and good ethical practice as a benchmark. - REFLECTION, COMMUNICATION

3. Plan your own future professional and personal development needs in relation to professional practice. - APPLICATION

nless otherwise stated, all books are available online through Staffordshire University library website when logged in using your university username and password. If you have difficulty accessing these, please contact the University library. There is also an online reading list for each module on this course. To access this, go to http://staffs.rebuslist.com/ and then type in the module code in the search box. Do not worry if this list seems excessively long. You may wish to focus on texts which are most relevant to your education sector. This module covers a wide range of texts and you may find that you only need to read short sections of the texts listed (or from other texts that you may find in libraries or journals). Your tutor will also advise you on the relevant texts and sections of texts to read. Remember that it is important to show you have considered views from a wide range of sources. When referring to texts in your assignment, always use https://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/refzone for guidance. There are many versions of Harvard referencing systems in use around the world, but for Staffordshire University, Refzone Harvard system is the only correct method to use.

Study skills:

For guidance on academic writing, remember that the Staffordshire University library holds a wealth of resources to support study skills at https://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/study-skills. The study skills team can also provide 1 to 1 support.

Suggested texts:

Bedford, D. and Wilson, E., (2013), Study Skills for Foundation Degrees (2nd Ed.), Abingdon: Routledge

Bolton, G. and Delderfield, R. (2018) reflective Practice: writing and professional development. London. Sage.

Cottrell, S., (2011), Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Weyers, J & McMillan, K. (2011) How to Write Essays and Assignments (2nd Edition)

VLE Resources

Your College VLE will be used as a support resource for candidates by providing flexible learning, especially during reading week with access to materials on-line to enable candidates to manage their time more effectively and to improve staff/ student communication through bulletin boards. Your VLE will enable you to have access to course materials, lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations and reading lists, to enable you to manage your time more effectively. Your VLE offers opportunities to engage in group work and independent learning by the use of such things as synchronous/asynchronous discussion boards, video links, blogs and wikis.

Osmond, A. (2016) Academic Writing and Grammar for Students (2nd Edition). London. Sage.

Greasley, P. (2016) Doing Essays and assignments: essential tips for students (2nd Edition) London. Sage.

Hayes, C., Daly, J., Duncan, M., Gill, R. and Whitehouse, A. (2014) Developing as a Reflective Early Years Professional. Northwich: Critical Publishing.

Hindmarch, D. et al., (2017) A Concise Guide to Education Studies. Northwich: Critical Publishing.

Suggested texts:

Hallet, E. (2013) The reflective early year practitioner. London. Sage.

Lindon, J. (2012), Reflective Practice and Early Years Professionalism: Linking Theory and Practiceż(2nd Ed.). Abingdon: Hodder Education

Machin, L. Hindmarch, D., Murray, S. and Richardson, T (2015) A Complete Guide to the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (2nd Edn) Northwich. Critical Publishing.

Musgrave, J. and Stobbs, N. (2015) Early Years Placements – a critical guide to outstanding work-based learning. Northwich. Critical Publishing.

Looking to develop your academic, personal and professional development?
This module offers an opportunity to build upon your existing knowledge, skills and understanding and will encourage you to adopt a positive approach to your new course. It is a shared module for both pathways, with topics including principles and approaches to reflection, roles & responsibilities and developing academic skills; as well as providing opportunities to consider personal career aspirations. This module will gain you 20 credits at level 4 towards the full 240 credits for your Foundation Degree.