BSc (Hons) Biology and Education

Education at Keele has a strong focus on contemporary issues in education and policymaking. Studying education means considering its relationship to the economy, its historical evolution, its impact on people’s life chances and identities, how education is organized, and how learners learn. Keele places education in a very contemporary and even future-focused context, exploring the ways in which the world of education is changing, and looking at education from philosophical, historical, psychological, cultural, and sociological perspectives. This course examines a wide range of topics which may include the changing ideas about childhood, learning, schooling, and education, and factors such as poverty, social policies, and digital technologies which impact these. You will explore a range of educational topics, which could include both present and future developments in education and professional practice, against the wider background of social, cultural, and economic change.

Year 1

COMPULSORY MODULES

• Physiology and Anatomy
• Fundamentals of Biology
• Core Practical Skills
• Understanding Learning
• Education in Britain: past, present, future

OPTIONAL MODULES

• Childhood, Policy, and Education
• Back to the Future: issues in the history of schooling
• Too Poor to Learn: Poverty, Education, and Social Policy
• Modern Democracies
• Classical Sociology

Year 2

COMPULSORY MODULES

• Microbes, Viruses, and Parasites
• Environmental Biology
• Practical Skills in Bioscience
• Research and Analytical Skills
• Education Matters: Contemporary Issues and Debates in Education
• Research Strategies and Methods in Education

OPTIONAL MODULES

• Human Impact on the Environment, scientific perspectives
• Current Topics in Biology
• Biodiversity Crisis
• Health and the Environment
• Play, Power and Pedagogy
• Globalization and its Discontents
• Contemporary Social Theory
• Special Education: introduction to theory and practice
• COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
• Education placement

Year 3

OPTIONAL MODULES

• Ecotoxicology and Risk Assessment
• Applied Insect Ecology
• Applied Life Sciences Placement – ISP
• Conservation Biology
• Double Applied Life Sciences Placement – ISP
• Life Sciences Double Experimental Project (with research skills assessment)
• Life Sciences Single Experimental Project (with research skills assessment) – ISP
• Life Sciences Dissertation
• Human Evolution
• Plant Science and Sustainability
• The making of professionals: Education, Health and Social Work
• Inclusive Education
• Home: belonging, locality, and material culture
• Independent Research Project – ISP
• Race, Politics, and Education
• Education, Work, and Identity
• Higher Education: policy and the student experience
• Celebrity

Employability

Our undergraduate Education program is not a teacher-training course but a study of education itself. However, the course does open up a range of opportunities in settings from pre-school to adult learning, as well as a variety of other contexts. On graduating you might work in the social services, in health, or in local or central government. The course also prepares you for further professional study to qualify in areas such as teaching, social work, or the legal profession. When you graduate, you might choose to do a PGCE and become a teacher. You will possess highly developed subject-specific and critical thinking skills that are prized for careers in schools. The course also opens up a range of opportunities outside schools as you will acquire a range of transferable employability skills of relevance to laboratory and industry careers.

Our graduates have gone on to work at:

• Boots
• Higher Education Providers
• ESF Consultants
• LGC
• Bentley
• NHS
• United Utilities
• Education First