MODULES
Foundation Year
CORE MODULES
Knowledge, Skills, Practice and the Self. Professional Life
Exploring Communities as Social Scientists
This module extends your understanding of local and global communities through applying the sociological concepts of community, identity, place, social memory and migration. It builds on your existing knowledge of the global and local contexts of your future academic study and employment. Cultural capital and knowledge of the complexities of communities will be introduced through topical readings, a guided walk of a London neighbourhood and a visit to a museum that you will prepare for and reflect on, using the key concepts of identity, place, social memory and migration. The module frontloads key academic skills required for university education and consolidates them throughout the module in order to support your learning in other modules at this level and above as well as your future careers.
Reading the Body Psychosocially
In this module, you will consider the choices you make in relation to your own body and its presentation to others and in so doing will consider how a psychosocial approach to the body embraces choices informed rationally and irrationally. The latter incorporate the personal and political as well as changing attitudes to health and life.
The human body and the nature of embodiment constitute a critical area of academic research and are central to cultural and social change. In a rapidly changing globalised world the body is a prime terrain of identity formation through popular discourses, surgical interventions, the aesthetisation of everyday life and online practices. At the same time, the commodification of the body, whereby the body becomes fragmented into a series of parts, objectified and represented through the media and promotional culture, is normalised as ‘ideal’. But what of its counterparts: the diseased body; the ageing body; the disabled body or even the monstrous body, the subject of literature and film since Shelley’s Frankenstein and the postmodern turn to vampires and zombies?
This module adopts a Psychosocial approach (as an integral part of the Social Sciences), whereby the body can be explored as a contested site for the operations of affect, power and identity, and explored via social categories such as gender, race, class and dis/ability. Bringing together sociological and cultural theory with basic concept of Freudian psychoanalysis, this module provides you with a succinct and focused introduction to interdisciplinary thinking within the Social Sciences.
Reimagining Work As A Social Scientist
Introduction to Digital Sociology
This module introduces you to Digital Sociology by exploring what it means to be a sociologist in the rapidly developing technological world. It will also introduce you to digital social research methods, asking what issues there are for social researchers in a digital society; what new material is available to social researchers; how social scientists can harness the new tools available to them and how they can navigate through this space in a secure, mindful and ethical way?
Globalisation and Society
Year 1
CORE MODULES
Mental Wealth 1: Knowledge, Skills, Practice and the Self
The module aims to ground and complement other shared or common level 4 programme modules by providing an introduction to the key Vision 2028 ‘UEL Graduate Attributes’, such as the psychological and physical determinants of human performance that are difficult or impossible to be replicated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The module takes a psychosocial approach to exploring ‘the self’ in both personal and professional contemporary contexts. The module aspires to provide an intellectually integrative and socially cohesive workshop experience.
The module will provide an opportunity for students to review their own personal development to date self-reflexively.
With these ends in mind, the module introduces students to theories of individual and social inequalities and how the latter can inform one’s approach to ‘community businesses ‘that is, all kinds of activities and enterprises run by local people for local people’ https://www.powertochange.org.uk/get-inspired). In the context of understanding the concept of, designing and exploring a community business, students will identify their employment and career aspirations and their personal, professionally relevant skills and potential abilities. Students will learn to develop skills with a psychosocial approach to research by gathering and presenting data in relation to their proposed community project.
Constructions of Identity
This module offers a solid introduction to the different aspects of identity and to ways of understanding who we are as individuals and members of various groups. Adopting a psycho-social approach, which consists of enriching fundamental sociological and cultural debates in the Social Sciences with insights from psychoanalysis and critical psychology, the module focuses, in equal measure, on individual experiences of identity and the symbolic frames and formations of society and culture that underline and support them. The module invites you to appreciate the historical, ideological, sociological and inner reality coordinates of contemporary identity. The linking and mapping of psychoanalytic concepts onto sociological and cultural theory is a priority for this module, as are the objectives of cultivating fluent expression and theoretically informed debates, promoting tolerance and dialogue, understanding the roots of prejudice and stereotyping and, in general, gaining a multi-faceted appreciation of what ‘construction’ means in the remit of the Social Sciences.
All key concepts and debates are made easily accessible and relevant to employment through a wide range contemporary case studies and examples from different cultures, communities and media. At the same time, you are encouraged to bring into class and make the most of their own life experience.
Psychology: Perspectives for Psychosocial Community Work
This module introduces you to a range of psychologies, the social context through which they emerged, and their relevance for psychosocial and community practice. It incorporates the learning and reflecting upon interpersonal skills for understanding individuals and groups and for therapeutic work. There is also an emphasis upon personal-psychological and emotional wellbeing.
Communication For Psychosocial And Community Work Relationships
The module is structured around the concept of 'care' as a paradigm, a category, and a practice through which we can think about fundamental issues of human experience such as interdependency, relationality, climate crisis, global inequalities, and racial injustices. The module introduces you to key principles and ethics of care from the traditional familial settings to care in contemporary, globalised, diverse, and local community settings- and which are allied with the key mental wealth competencies of Vision 2028 namely, social, emotional, and cultural intelligence and resilience. Reflecting on how 'Cultures of Intimacy' might look like beyond the private realm, this module offers you an opportunity to explore the principles of belonging, interdependence, relationality, emotional growth, that are difficult or impossible to be replicated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Lastly, the module encourages you to critically identify practices of care of the self and how these are being transformed in the digital world.
Preparation For Working With Communities
Psychosocial Work In Community Settings
This module aims to ground and complement the other shared and common level 4 programme modules across the subject area by providing an introduction to working in the field of psychosocial and community work. Offering you the opportunity to access intellectually integrative and socially cohesive workshop and activity experiences.
This module will contextualise the historical, social and political development and impact of psychosocial and community work across a wide-ranging field of work, and study, introducing you to professional work principles, theory, policy and sources of information.
The module highlights the diversity of children, young people and families and the challenges and opportunities which arise as a result of providing professional support, providing you with sound, relevant and practice based theory.
Year 2
CORE MODULES
Knowledge, Skills, Practice & The Self (Mental Wealth 2)
Building on the philosophy and learning outcomes of level 4 module 'Knowledge, Skills, Practice and the Self 1', the present module grounds and complements the other shared or common at level 5 whilst enhancing the psychological and physical determinants of human performance that are difficult or impossible to be replicated by Artificial Intelligence (as defined by Vision 2028).
While the module continues to develop the capabilities of individual students, the emphasis now is on the theories and practices of communities, teams and teamwork, groups and group co-operation.
Students are invited to explore a range of questions: 'What does it mean to be part of a community, a team or a group?' 'How do teams collaborate and what makes for effective elaboration?' 'What are the qualities necessary for being an effective and creative team-player?' What is 'social good' and how can we contribute to it in an ethical and sustainable manner? The exploration of the nature of communities, teams and groups is complemented by the acquisition of invaluable practical skills such as: an active understanding of needs, potentials and options, cultural and emotional literacy and reflexivity; planning, organising initiatives, liaising and assessing one's performance and acting on feedback.
In addition to these skills and activities, students will work together in small groups to negotiate the group development on community projects similar to those proposed/designed at level 4.
Mad, Bad or Sad? Understanding Mental Disorder
This module provides you with an understanding of the emergence of ideas about psychological illnesses and their treatment. It introduces you to some core categories of mental distress and disorder and examines key medical, psychological and social theories concerned with these categories. You will develop an appreciation of the contested nature of mental health and illness. Are people's difficulties better understood as medical illnesses or simply as responses to social or personal distress? Contemporary psychiatric categorizations will be introduced alongside some major critiques of psychiatry. The module addresses some of the difficulties associated with a specific Western medical conceptualisation of mental distress.
Professional Practice in Communities 1*
Counselling: Therapeutic Skills & Practice
Building on the philosophy and learning outcomes of level 4 module 'Knowledge, Skills, Practice and the Self 1'. This module is also related to other mental health modules on Level 5 and is a further development in introducing counselling approaches and skills.
The aim of the module is to introduce students to the main counselling frameworks used by therapists in the social services, NHS and private practice. The module provides an overview and basic comparison of those counselling models. They are; Behavioural; Cognitive; Humanistic; Existential; Psychoanalytic and Systemic approaches to counselling and psychotherapy. After the overview of different counselling approaches and implications for practice, the focus will be on psychodynamic approaches in more depth and how to practice these skills.
Research Methods
This module explores methods of professional learning, including literature research, practitioner enquiry, action research and ethics.
OPTIONAL MODULES
Difference, Race, Diversity, Inequality
This module aims to introduce the debates/arguments of 'social difference' as a psychosocial process through which identities are constructed. It supports students to explore the intersections between psychosocial categories such as social class, gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability, migration, consumption, sexuality which shape identities and the experiences of othering within the structures of social inequality.
One of the goals of the module is to support you in identifying and reflecting on the effects of social difference on everyday practices of discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion.
Children, Young People & Families
The module equips you with the knowledge and skills required for professional practice with service users in the statutory and voluntary or social enterprise / tertiary sectors.
The module will enable students to develop understanding practice and professional standards of conduct, performance and ethics in relation to guidelines which govern and regulate working with diverse service users and change-makers.
To enable you to identify the social, economic and cultural influences which shape the experience of family life and the education of children, examining social policy and sociological critiques of the nuclear and diverse formations of family, looking at the nature and nurture theoretical concepts and the role of parents and family in the social education of children.
Year 3
CORE MODULES
Knowledge, Skills, Practice and The Self (Mental Wealth 3)
Professional Practice in Communities 2*
Applied Research Project in Social Sciences
This module allows you to apply your understanding of key social scientific theories and concepts as well as issues and methods in social and community work to a research question of your choice. The module introduces necessary research and evaluation tools and methods and ethical procedures, data collection and analysis methods and starts you on your journey to becoming independent researchers. You will complete an independent research project or an evaluation of a project you have been involved with through placements, volunteering or work experience. You will receive support and guidance throughout the independent research and are encouraged to reflect on the methodological, ethical and theoretical issues that you will face in the course of your research experience.
OPTIONAL MODULES
- Managing And Leading In The Not For Profit Sector
- Leaders, Followers And Fanatics
- Health, Community And Activism
- Gender, Difference And Empowerment
