module specification

Through a series of activities based both within the classroom and the field, the module encourages students to reflect on their own identities, lived experiences and educational encounters in order to examine Global City London as place (the world), as a way of being (their world) and as confluence of many and diverse stories.  Students are asked to explore subjectivity/objectivity through learning encounters with the Global City, inter alia, through the media of walking, photography, film and sensori-scapes.

The module aims:

• To draw upon the global city as an empirical resource for educational enquiry;
•  To draw on a range of theories from sociology and cultural studies to examine the relationship between the self, groups, social systems and social realities with a specific interest in educational institutions and their place in the learning city;
•  To consider concepts of borders and boundaries that relate simultaneously to social relations and to subjectivity/identity and begin to identify their phenomenology in the global city;
• To explore ways in which education has historically served to regulate and police boundaries on the basis of social class, gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, language, dis/ability etc. 
   

Through a range of fieldwork and class-based activities students will explore their own identities and relationships with London in relation to those of their peers and others through media including walking, photography, video and other sensori-scapes. The module will encourage academic debate around equality and diversity as hallmarks of urban education and its theorisation; these debates will emanate from and be stimulated by empirical encounter.  It will draw upon formal areas of urban geography, sociology and cultural studies and the theorisation, metaphors and methodologies of enquiry they contribute to interpretation and understanding of the global city.

The learning and teaching strategy for the module will include scheduled lectures, seminars and tutorial groups along with guided fieldwork.

Students will be required to compile a learning log. The log will provide the resources to support the compilation and completion of a multi-modal essay.

At the end of the module, students will be able to:

• Identify a wide range of educational issues, themes and contexts and describe their phenomenology within the context of the global city and urban realities;
• Demonstrate an improved capacity to deploy key academic literacies, viz. reading, writing and information access in accordance with the course strategies for these areas;
• Demonstrate an ability to consider the social context of education from the viewpoint of the student and the institution and diverse communities;
• Demonstrate a knowledge of the historical and political contexts of present day debates and educational policies in the area of diversity and inclusion and their empirical impacts in the global city through interpretation of empirically-derived evidence.

The assessment strategy will be constructed around: The production of a multi-media (photography or other media) essay on living and learning in London.

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