MA ODE module overview: Curriculum, learning, and society (E846)
I took several modules at The Open University (OU) as part of my master’s degree. Before I began this journey, I always wished I could understand better how the modules were organized and what specific topics they covered, so I’ve decided to share that information for the modules I took. (Here are all the summaries.)
OU’s description of this module
This module supports a wide range of professionals, including teachers, working in informal and formal learning environments including educational institutions and workplace settings, to evaluate and develop their practice to support learning. It introduces some of the major issues dominating the areas of learning and its assessment in educational research. In the module, curriculum includes the knowledge base of what is learned or demonstrated in particular activities, subjects or professions. Through your study you will develop a theoretical framework that relates views of learning, knowledge and pedagogy, which can be applied to analyse and evaluate your own and others’ practice.
I would add…
This course investigates sociocultural theory. It’s organized around a framework that focuses on views about knowledge, learning, and pedagogy as they influence and are reflected in the ways curricula is specified in the social order, and enacted and experienced in the experienced world. They provide this drawing to illustrate the framework:
This was a reading- and writing-intensive course with no project work. You submit one paper at the end of each section, basically applying what you learned in the section to your own work context.
Books
Most of the assigned readings for this module were in these three books:
- Knowledge and Practice: Representations and Identities
- Learning and Practice: Agency and Identities
- Pedagogy and Practice: Culture and Identities
I also read other journal articles to support my papers, and I read Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity to support parts of my final paper.
Module outline
Section 1: Introduction to the module
- The learning pathway
- Theory and practice
- Social mediation
- The dialectical relationship
- Connecting to curriculum
Section 2: Learning and practice
- The nature of mind and learning
- Culture: values and tools
- Understanding the sociocultural approach to assessment and thinking
- Identities, agency, and learning
- Extending agency
Section 3: Pedagogy and practice
- Thinking about pedagogy
- Pedagogy and the social order: the shaping of practice
- Understanding learners’ perspectives on pedagogy
Section 4: Knowledge and practice
- Thinking about knowledge
- Views about the nature of knowledge
- Knowledge representations and assessment
- Curriculum and knowledge
- Knowledge representations and identities
Section 5: Pedagogy as cultural bridging
- Living in a culture or living culturally?
- Cultural bridging in action: extending agency
- Shaping identities