MSc Education (Child Development and Education)

The MSc Education (Child Development and Education) is unique in offering a combination of a strong research basis with recognised expertise in policy and applied research. It aims to promote critical understanding of developmental theories and research and the use of this knowledge in the design and evaluation of programmes aimed at promoting children’s development and education.

It promotes reflection and discussion about how theories of child development inform practice and how challenges faced in educational and care settings call for further theoretical and research enquiry.
In this full-time, one year Masters course, you will participate in lectures, seminars, workshops and field work, which provide rich opportunities for you to deepen your understanding of child development theories and their use in making decisions about children. A research internship, carried out in one of the research groups in the Department, will expand your research skills. Your Masters project will allow you to study a topic of your interest in greater detail.

Our students come from varied professional backgrounds: primary school teachers seeking to become specialists in literacy or numeracy; experienced Early Years professionals; teachers of children with special educational needs; professionals working with children and aiming to prepare themselves for a leadership role in different types of service (e.g. head teachers, professionals engaged in programme evaluation research, including governmental agencies). We welcome graduates with psychology degrees who wish to develop their knowledge of psychology in the field of child development and education; those seeking to pursue a doctoral degree will find that this course offers them a solid disciplinary and research basis.

Educational Aims of the Programme

  1. To promote students’ critical understanding of child development theories and research, including cognitive, social and emotional aspects of development;
  2. To provide students with a critical knowledge of widely disseminated programmes aimed at pre-school children and at the development of language and literacy, cognitive stimulation and the development of numeracy in school;
  3. To develop students’ knowledge and skills required for the analysis of current issues in the education of children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in different early childhood settings and in schools;
  4. To promote students’ reflective knowledge of different ways of approaching the education and assessment of children with special educational needs;
  5. To provide students with experience with a range of research methods used in the evaluation of educational and early childhood programmes (including those for families and institutional settings) and to develop their ability to analyse critically evaluation reports;
  6. To encourage discussion on how theories of child development inform practice and how challenges faced in educational and care settings call for further theoretical and research enquiry;
  7. To provide a strong basis for further studies in Child Development and encourage future applications to doctoral studies in this domain.

Programme Features

The course is structured in three papers (Child Development, Interventions and Policies to Promote Children’s Development, and Foundations of Educational Research) plus a Masters dissertation. A special feature of the MSc Education (Child Development and Education) is that students participate in a research internship that offers them the opportunity to be apprentices under an experienced researcher, usually as a member of a team, and to reflect on this learning experience.

Child Development is taught over two terms and discusses child development theories, considering cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional aspects of development from infancy to late childhood. Normative and non-normative development is considered. The study of cognitive development includes a critical analysis of theories of cognitive development, current issues in the development of pre-school children, the role of working memory in children’s school learning, the connections between theory, research and practice in the teaching of literacy, numeracy and science in school. The study of language development covers a range of issues in first and second language development and childhood bilingualism. The study of children’s social-emotional development includes a critical analysis of attachment theory, studies of mother-child interaction, children’s understanding of the other, moral development, the impact of social and family environments on children, peer relationships and the development of self-concept.

Interventions and Policies to Promote Children’s Development covers programmes designed for school as well as pre-school children. Original reports of the assessment of intervention programmes and systematic reviews form the core readings in this module. The module places emphasis on the critical analysis of the theoretical background for interventions and of the empirical basis provided in their assessment. It promotes discussion of the relationships between theory and practice. The first term focuses on interventions and policies related to primary school and the second on pre-school programmes.

Foundations of Educational Research is part of the common core of all the MSc Education strands. It offers students an overview of quantitative and qualitative methods of research, practical experience with a sample of these methods, and an opportunity to discuss their own ideas as they work towards their dissertation. Ethical aspects of educational research are discussed in depth.

Click here for the current Programme Specifications for this course.

You are encouraged to explore the Department’s website and find out about the research carried out by the course team in the research groups Child Learning and FELL.


Dr Maria Evangelou and Professor Terezinha Nunes with the MSc Education (Child Development and Education) student group (October 2011)

Titles of Previous Masters Dissertations

Work carried out by previous students illustrates the range of projects that have been developed in this Masters course.

  • Primary school students’ self-regulation and motivation during well- and ill-structured tasks
  • Children’s, parents’ and teachers’ experiences of primary school transition and children’s social behaviour after Year 1
  • Awareness of the Structure of Compound Words in Korean and English
  • The relationship between maternal vocalisations with 10-month old infants and child language scores at 36 months
  • The effects of the SPOKES intervention on maternal teaching behaviours during shared-book reading at home: an RCT study
  • Chinese children’s morphological awareness in English and Chinese
  • Parents – Schools Partnerships (PSP) in Some Private Preschools in Tyre, Lebanon
  • Assessing a working memory intervention based on metacognitive processes
  • Quality in Early Childhood Settings: A comparison of the views of parents and professionals within Minnesota’s Twin Cities Metro Area, USA
  • Parents’ marital quality, parenting attitudes and behaviours, and children’s social development
  • Family Income and Child Developmental Outcomes – A Relationship Mediated by the Quality of the Home Environment?

Join the online Open Forum on 23 May to find out more. Further details here.