Education Studies and Special Educational Needs BA (Hons)

The University of Winchester

• Excellent preparation if you want to become a teacher, or keep your options open for other careers in Special Educational Needs or care roles
• Voluntary work in your second year counts towards academic credit
• Benefit from a caring and dedicated tutor team to support you through your degree

Educators make a lasting impact on people’s lives. By specialising in Special Educational Needs you could make a positive impact on some of society’s most vulnerable people, while working to bring about a more inclusive society.

Working in Special Educational Needs can offer some of the most rewarding, inspiring and satisfying careers possible. Our course offers you the first steps on such a pathway.

You study Special Educational Needs through a diverse range of perspectives, including disability studies, psychology, sociology, philosophy, political theory and feminism. The nature of inclusivity is examined in relation to social justice, identity, gender, race and politics. The course is both a rigorous academic degree and excellent preparation for those who wish to take a PGCE and become a teacher, possibly to specialise further in Special Educational Needs.

In Year 1, you engage thoroughly with issues at the heart of special needs, disability and inclusion in education, bringing them into focus through your own experiences.

In Year 2, you learn about theories that illuminate key issues in disability, impairments, exclusion and inclusion in schooling and society. You choose from a broad array of specialist modules such as Thinking about Race, Theories of Discipline, Sexuality in Education, and Social Inclusion and Exclusion.

In Year 3, you draw upon your own experience and knowledge to critically evaluate policy, practice and theory in special and inclusive education. You also write a dissertation or independent study project. Additional optional modules include The Inclusive Educator, The Language of Inclusion, Inclusion and Refugees, or Education and the Arab-Islamic World.

Our graduates become teachers, work with disabled children and adults, specialise in special needs in schooling, and enter caring professions. Many do pastoral work, or seek postgraduate degrees, for example, the MA Philosophy of Education.