MA Inclusive Education

Our MA Inclusive Education masters is a flexible course for anyone interested in critically exploring inclusive education. We offer a full-time route and a part-time route so you can study at a pace that suits you.

From early years practitioners, teachers and leaders in education, to staff in local health authorities, health services and aspiring researchers, our course appeals to a variety of backgrounds and professions. You’ll be joining a diverse and thriving community of postgraduate students from the UK and across the world.

Analyse key issues, significant debates and global concepts in the field of inclusive education. Reflect on your personal understandings of special educational needs and consider the relationship between educational values and the development of inclusive practice.

You will evaluate and learn to think with a range of theoretical frameworks to deepen your critical analysis. And you’ll explore how theory informs how we interpret and analyse key issues in education.

We aim to empower you to approach your own research with confidence. You’ll extend your understanding of research techniques to prepare you for completing your own dissertation. Throughout the project, you will have access to support from active researchers in our internationally renowned Educational and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

We’ve designed this postgraduate course to allow you to specialise and focus on areas of education that interest you. You can specialise by choosing an option unit based on work by world-class researchers in the Faculty of Education. Your option units may include topics such as literacy and language, mental health, autism, or international perspectives in education.

When you graduate, you’ll achieve a masters degree that highlights areas of your personal and professional interest.

Whether you take our part-time or full-time course, you will start your MA Inclusive Education with two core units.

In your first unit, you’ll critically explore global key issues in inclusive education and look at relevant, current legislation in the UK and how it affects policy and practice in educational settings. You‘ll relate your learning to your own practice and understanding of inclusive education, and its wider connection with issues such as social justice.

And in the second core unit, you’ll engage with theoretical frameworks to deepen your analysis. And you’ll explore how theory informs how we interpret and analyse key issues in education today.

You will examine issues of marginalisation, disability and difference, and race and culture, and consider the theoretical frameworks which underpin them. Through this, you’ll start to develop your own theoretical position. You’ll draw from fields such as critical pedagogy, disability studies and critical race theory to think about inclusive education in relation to the challenges of globalisation, power, agency, inequality and diversity, and sustainability. 

You’ll join students from other education-based masters courses in a third core unit, Principles and Practice of Educational Research. We’ve designed this unit to develop your understanding of critical issues and methodologies within research and help prepare you for completing your own dissertation. 

In the fourth unit, you’ll pursue your own individual interests by choosing one of a series of option units. Our option units are designed and delivered by active researchers from within our internationally renowned Educational and Social Research Institute (ESRI). We’ve designed these option units to reflect our world-class research carried out at the Faculty of Education.

Our taught units are assessed by coursework. This allows you to focus the topic of your work on areas that suit your professional and personal interests.

The final part of your masters is a dissertation. For many students, this is the most challenging part of the course, but also the most interesting and most rewarding.

With guidance from your expert teaching and support team, you’ll design and carry out a research project of your own and complete a written thesis.

Some recent examples of topics include:

a reflective study of the impact on one family of changes in the provision for learners with Special Educational Needs over 30 years
communicating with severely autistic children in class
a critical analysis of the principles of inclusive education
teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of school readiness
You’ll also benefit from our integrated support network of services offered at Manchester Met, as well as our course-specific support provided by your programme team. You will have a personal tutor to accompany you throughout your studies. Your tutor aims to provide tailored support and advice from start to finish.

As a student at Manchester Met, you’ll also be able to access Masterclass. Masterclass is a wide range of optional year-round discussion groups, reading groups, writing workshops and events designed specifically for and with masters students in the Faculty of Education.