Higher and Professional Education MA - 2026/7

Other information

The Surrey Institute of Education / MA in Higher and Professional Education is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Digital Capabilities, Employability, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Resourcefulness and Resilience, and Sustainability. This programme is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Digital capabilities:
The MA has developed clearly structured and accessible VLE provisions that support synchronous sessions, and provide a multitude of resources to support asynchronous guided learning tasks (e.g. fortnightly guided learning). Therefore, participants must exhibit high levels of digital literacy and are supported to develop these skills by module and personal tutors as they undertake their studies. For example, they need to be able to use discussion forums, navigate SurreyLearn and module reading lists, access a range of online resources, as well as developing skills for a range of assessment tasks e.g., word-processed essays, recorded poster presentations, synchronous vivas, development of open educational resources, collaborative assessment rubric development etc. Module tutors will also demonstrate how to incorporate a range of technologies into their teaching to support the development of study productivity through use of note-taking and concept/mind-mapping applications for capturing reflections and making connections between concepts (e.g. MS OneNote, Canva, Mindmeister). Participants will be enabled to use collaborative tools for capturing and sharing group thinking and outputs (e.g., break out rooms, chat boxes, online polls, sharing resources, Jamboards, Padlet), as well as data analysis tools for educational research (e.g. SPSS, NVivo).

In addition to the digital capabilities developed as part of being a participant on an online programme, digital capabilities are integrated into the everyday lives of our participants as teachers in the contemporary HE landscape. Participants on our programmes also have the opportunity to explore the role of digital technologies in contemporary HE practice. For example, on the MA, GCAM004 considers the influence of AI on assessment design and innovation, and GCAM019 and GCAM018 in particular, are dedicated to digital learning. GCAM019 and GCAM018 capitalise on our inhouse expertise as they are facilitated in collaboration with colleagues from the Digital Learning Team and a member of the EDR team who specialises in online learning design and digital learning. These modules are being developed to be more contemporary, attractive and aligned with the Digital Capabilities pillar and have been renamed to better reflect contemporary practice and terminology in the sector (i.e. from Designing Technology Enhanced Learning, to Design for Learning (GCAM019) and from Exploring Technology Enhanced Learning, to Digital Learning and Education Futures (GCAM018)). Both modules will scaffold participants to apply digital capabilities frameworks to participants¿ teaching practice, the experiences of their learners and disciplinary contexts, and involve the design and development of digital artefacts such as videos and Open Educational Resources as part of their summative assessment. Participants will be encouraged to explore and critically evaluate the suitability and use of digital technologies within their own teaching contexts, which will enable them to position themselves in relation to current trends in digital education and expand their horizons through exploring a range of ¿education future¿ scenarios and emerging trends (e.g., AI in higher education, microcredentials, hybrid learning).

The assessment tasks for GCAM019 and GCAM018 not only serve to diversify the assessment diet on the MA, but also promote authentic learning experiences that reflect and are aligned with key activities of academic developers, HE educators, digital learning professionals and leaders in digital education (e.g. evaluation of short courses learning design, creation of a written learning design with rationale, and design and delivery of a learning design pitch (GCAM019); creation of an Open Educational Resource (GCAM018)). The critical evaluation of colleagues¿ learning designs are a key part of academic developers and digital learning professionals¿ roles, as is the showcasing of innovations and sharing of good practice.

Employability:
As a programme that recruits participants who are actively engaged in teaching and the support of learning in higher and professional education, the MA is grounded in professionally focused learning that nurtures career ready graduates. This is because a core element of the MA scaffolds participants to reflect, critique and develop their pedagogic practices. The impact of the MA is demonstrated across the various module related assessment tasks on the MA. These include the impact on personal pedagogic practice (e.g. developments to assessment practices to include student partnership in the development of assessment rubrics as a result of GCAM004; developments to teaching observation approaches as a result of GCAM020), institutional practice (e.g. the implementation of a new peer mentoring scheme across an institution as a result of GCAM022), and support for pedagogic research (e.g. self-inquiry supported within GCAM008, and within GCAM021 and GCAM003, and there have been a number of articles / chapters published by programme-based participants in collaboration with SIoE members of staff as well as individually). This impact has resulted in the professional development of participants, recognition as Senior Fellows of Advance HE, their influence over departmental and institutional development, their being promoted to more senior roles and/or roles that follow a particular passion during the course of our programmes, as well as a change of role to one that is more education-focused.

The flexibility built into the MA supports participants to follow aspects of their pedagogic practice that are specific to them and their disciplinary or professional context and which they are most interested in. The MA also includes regular opportunities to reflect on the purpose of higher education, personal values and development as a teacher, and are scaffolded to critically reflect upon their own practice and that of their peers and colleagues to develop their pedagogic knowledge and practice, as well as their research skills via multiple opportunities to learn through enquiry-based learning with real-world cases. This enables them to develop evidence-informed practices, and engage in higher education research and evaluation of practice within their own settings.

Participants are expected to engage with the SIoE values outlined above, which are also modelled by the programme team. The transferrable skills developed are numerous and tailored to the aspects of pedagogic practice that they become interested in. The overarching transferrable skills involve the development of critical thinking, reflection and writing, the ability to critique and challenge accepted wisdom within their settings using evidence-informed approaches, and skills in constructing a line of argument individually and in small groups of peers. The dialogic approach adopted by the MA means that participants are able to share and be exposed to alternative viewpoints, experiences and practices, which can provide the basis of authentic case studies to interrogate and apply theoretical lenses to in order to develop greater insight into their own values and practices. This discussion is therefore grounded in personal experiences of teaching and applied to current and future pedagogic practice.

As the learning journey on the MA is flexible participants who have just started the programme frequently engage in modules with participants who are coming towards the end of the programme, resulting in the cross-fertilisation of experience, as well as disciplinary / professional contexts. Self-, peer- and tutor-feedback is integral to the MA, so that participants are engaged in both receiving and providing multiple forms of developmental comments to support the development of their community of learners. Therefore, the ¿industry professionals¿ are the participants on the programme, as well as the tutors who lead the modules. However, additional academics beyond the programme are also involved in contributing to it in order to diversity the perspectives and contexts to which students are exposed (e.g. GCAM004 contains live/recorded contributions from scholars from across the world, including Professors David Carless (Hong Kong), Phill Dawson (Australia), David Boud (Australia), and Anastasiya Lipnevich (USA)).

Global and cultural capabilities:
The MA works respectfully with diverse participants from multidisciplinary backgrounds (e.g. Veterinary Education, Theology, Performing Arts, Architecture, Engineering, Nurse Education etc.), multiple professional contexts (universities, Salvation Army, NHS Trust Hospitals etc.), and multiple education systems and countries (e.g. Namibia, USA, Argentina, Qatar, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Greece). Diversity is also reflected in the team of academic staff who support these programmes, who come from multidisciplinary backgrounds (e.g. Politics, Zoology, Linguistics, Psychology, Education Studies, Learning Development, Engineering and Physics etc.), and have experience of multiple educational contexts and countries (e.g. Turkey, UAE, West Indies, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, USA, Brazil, Australia etc.). This provides a rich basis from which to draw out examples, experiences and case studies from both the participants and tutors to develop cohort exposure and engagement with different cultures and countries. Furthermore, additional scholars are invited to contribute (a)synchronously to expand the perspectives and contexts to which participants are exposed (e.g. GCAM004 incorporates international contributions for each of the 5 topics via in person attendance at synchronous sessions or recorded contributions embedded within SurreyLearn; GCAM007 interviewed a range of researchers about various aspects of the research process; GCAM022 invited two academics from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to discuss their understanding and experiences of peer mentoring).

This diversity is celebrated within MA sessions through the dialogic approach adopted in which participants are encouraged and supported to surface the values and potential biases that inform their practice and share their experiences with their peers in order to encourage the sharing of practice, reflection upon commonalities and differences, and exposure to a broad range of perspectives. All participants are encouraged to engage in discussions and activities, and to share personal experiences and case studies from their context, which ensures that everybody has a chance to contribute to the shared learning experience that can take place during synchronous sessions or within discussion forums asynchronously, depending on which means of interaction participants are most comfortable with. Reading lists draw upon a diverse range of literature, across different disciplines, countries and cultural backgrounds, and are drawn upon to interrogate practice and identify the biases / assumptions inherent in them (e.g. theoretical lens / paradigm adopted, challenges of application to practice, influences of the context within which the research emerged etc.). When combined with the dialogue around their learning journey, participants are scaffolded to co-construct meaning with their peers, colleagues and tutors through exposure to pedagogic practices that are common in other countries or cultural contexts.

As all SIoE staff are actively engaged in research, they draw upon this knowledge and expertise to inform the design and focus of their teaching, and also support participants to engage in self-inquiry (e.g. GCAM023 requires participants to interrogate the nature of their disciplines and knowledge structures that inform their teaching practice; GCAM008 requires participants to undertake an action research project, and; GCAM009 requires students to develop an autoethnographic submission) in order to develop greater insight into their teaching practices. For those participants completing the PGDip or MA, they are also required to complete a research proposal (for GCAM021) and complete a research project (for GCAM003), requiring them to advance understanding in their chosen area of practice within their disciplinary / professional context. In addition, the assessment tasks for both programmes encourage participants to reflect upon the implications of their learning that includes critical engagement with diverse perspectives and contexts for their own teaching practice and the contexts in which they work.

Resourcefulness and Resilience:
Participants must demonstrate resilience and resourcefulness in managing the demands of working whilst studying on the MA, and in returning to the role of student whilst also acting as teachers in their careers. Whilst on the programme participants work both independently and co-operatively with their peers in developing their knowledge and skills. Participants are supported to engage with challenging situations in higher education, and explore their own responses and reactions to these. Methods such as autoethnography and critical reflection provide a space within which participants can engage with discomfort and harness these emotions to consider their own development in a positive and evidence-informed manner. Issues such as resilience, well-being and self-care form a key part of the programme in their aim to develop effective, critically engaged pedagogues who can work in a flexible and agile manner, adapting to the constantly evolving landscape of their disciplinary and/or professional contexts.

Within taught sessions, participants are supported to use the literature to share and interrogate their experiences and perspectives during class discussions and within online forums. The MA places great emphasis on the development of trust and focuses on creating safe spaces in which participants can interrogate their practice and share their challenges and partially formed ideas. In so doing, programme staff emphasise and demonstrate the importance of compassion, trust and empathy, and support participants to do the same during their interactions with each other and in the feedback provided. Every participant on the MA is provided with a personal tutor who will meet with them at least twice a year, although as a learner-centred relationship participants are welcome to meet with their personal tutors as much as is required to best support their learning journey. This relationship with their personal tutor can support participants to respond positively and effectively to the opportunities, challenges, difficulties and setbacks that they might face on the programme as well as more broadly (e.g. personal issues that can interfere with participants ability to study, job opportunities that personal tutors have supported participants to prepare for, crises of confidence about ability to complete a programme etc.). Participants are encouraged to work independently and within groups to develop their understanding and share their ideas for formative and summative assessment tasks. Such groups are tutor and peer-led. For example, in GCAM004 participants were required to co-construct an assessment rubric and share their ideas for their summative submissions so that they could receive tutor and peer feedback to support the development of those ideas. Within this module, the relationship between the affective domain and feedback was one of the 5 topics, in which participants were asked to reflect upon and analyse emotive feedback experiences in order to understand why it was emotive and how to develop effective responses to such reactions. In GCAM007, as this module is fully asynchronous in nature, participants created peer-led groups so that they could meet synchronously to discuss their learning.

In relation to assessment on the MA, this is very much grounded in participants¿ teaching practice within their disciplinary and/or professional contexts. Participants are frequently required to critique their teaching and consider how the research evidence and cross-fertilisation of ideas from exposure to the variety of perspectives and experiences that their diverse peer group provide, can inform self-inquiry and the development of their teaching practices. Each module scaffolds participants to consider their teaching practice from a different perspective and equips them with a range of tools to interrogate and develop that practice in an agile and evidence-informed manner. For example, GCAM023 supports participants to develop greater self-awareness of the nature of their disciplinary / professional contexts and how this informs / challenges their approaches to teaching; GCAM007 supports participants to evaluate educational research so that they are equipped to critically engage with the evidence that underpins pedagogic development; GCAM008 requires participants to engage in action research thereby equipping them with the skills to be able to evaluate and develop their teaching practice in systematic ways etc. Furthermore, feedback permeates the MA and participants are provided with frequent opportunities to interact with their peers, also receiving tutor and peer feedback throughout their studies, which supports the development of self or inner feedback (Nicol & McCallum, 2022). For example, within GCAM004 participants are scaffolded to develop greater agency and self-regulation through the feedback received. They begin by receiving tutor feedback, then also have the opportunity to receive and provide feedback and to co-construct an assessment rubric, and then they are encouraged to identify what they would like to receive feedback on (i.e. to self-evaluate what they require support on), and within the final summative viva are required to reflect upon what impact the feedback process has had on their learning journey. Therefore, landing places (Derham et al., 2022) are provided that scaffold participants to reflect and act upon the feedback received that supports them to develop a responsive attitude to feedback. In addition, an evidence-informed assessment brief template has been piloted in several modules on the MA, and will now be rolled out to the whole programme to ensure consistency of practice and to provide insight into the expectations and standards of each assessment task. This will ensure a more inclusive assessment environment, and can provide an assessment artefact that underpins preparatory activities prior to submission, as well as providing opportunities for co-creation of assessment artefacts.

Professional development lies at the heart of the MA, the aim of which is not to provide participants with pedagogic hints and tips that may or may not work within their contexts, but to equip them with the skills, knowledge and understanding to interrogate practice, and address the challenges encountered in evidence-informed and critically reflective ways. The solutions will therefore be developed and owned by individual participants and thereby designed to be applied to the contexts within which they work. They will equip participants to address challenges faced in autonomous and self-regulated ways that will provide more sustainable skills for application to the development of practice beyond the duration of our programmes.

Sustainability:
Many elements of learning and teaching strategies for modules on the MA align with teaching, learning and assessment approaches for education for sustainable development (Advance HE and QAA, 2021). As mentioned in previous pillars, reflection upon own practice and its development is central to the programme, and so learning is directly applicable to practice. Therefore, the MA is highly impactful and sustainable in nature. Time is dedicated in the MA to discussing sustainability in terms of sustainable teaching in HE, and the challenges and pressures upon teachers throughout the programme, via large and small group sessions. The concept of sustainability is a core element of several MA modules (i.e. GCAM019 - Design for Learning, GCAM018 - Digital Learning and Education Futures). Participants are encouraged to investigate a range of frameworks on sustainability including the 17 sustainable development goals, UNESCO¿s eight key competencies for sustainability, and the inner development goals (transformational skills for sustainable development). These frameworks will scaffold and stimulate participants¿ thinking by increasing their awareness of the key dimensions of education for sustainable development. Participants will be prompted to reflect on and critically examine the relevance, significance and complexity of integrating key themes and principles of these frameworks in their design and teaching practices. As part of their summative assessment in relation to these two MA modules, participants will be asked to articulate how they have considered and integrated sustainability in their learning designs. They will also explore how their design choices interact with and are impacted by complex and interconnected social, environmental, and economic systems and challenges. Indeed, these modules offer a space to discuss all five of the pillars and their impact on practice. Furthermore, they will provide multiple opportunities for participants to develop key competencies for sustainability such as systems thinking, anticipatory thinking, collaboration, and self-awareness in greater depth, including engagement with systems and critical thinking on learning design in relation to macro (consideration of wider context influences including global, sector-wide and institutional), meso (module-level design and influences from various stakeholders) and micro (teaching session or individual activity level designs) elements of learning design together into a cohesive design process. Another key example is within the module ¿Digital Learning and Education Futures¿ (i.e. GCAM018) in which participants will select an ¿education future¿ of their choice (e.g., the AI academy, hybrid learning, microcredentialising, justice-driven innovation). By using anticipatory (future-looking) and critical thinking they will unpack the potential impact of their selected ¿education future¿ scenario to their own practice but also to (higher) education institutions, policies, students and the wider sector. This part of the module can be key for defining ¿desirable education futures¿ and working backwards to identify policies and programmes that will connect that to the present, but also identifying emerging practices that may be less desirable and promising for sustainable educational futures. The curriculum will also include case studies and scenarios centered around co-creation and co-design with diverse stakeholders and communities. These will be situated and discussed within the context of several sustainable development goals (e.g., G4: Quality Education, G10: Reduced Inequalities, and G17 Partnerships). And to ensure a strong foundation in sustainability, participants will gain access to an introductory online course on sustainability, developed by our university's sustainability experts. This resource will be available through Surreylearn and will equip participants with essential knowledge before delving deeper into key issues and facets of education for sustainable development.

In addition, as an online programme, this also means that all learning materials, assignment submissions and marking across all modules are done electronically to reduce paper waste and the carbon footprint of learning. More broadly, support for academic writing is provided across the MA in the form of online resources via SurreyLearn, formative feedback from tutors and peers, and exposure to a range of writing styles via the literature engaged with (e.g. see the General MA SurreyLearn site). This is particularly important for participants who may not have studied academically for some time, as well as a refresher for those who have or who are unfamiliar with writing about their teaching practice. There is also support for the development of reflective practice and writing for those who are less familiar with this.