26 March 2007

New Community Education courses at Dundee welcomed by professionals

The University of Dundee has launched two innovative new courses in Community Education which are already being hailed as offering exciting and vital programmes for people working across the public and voluntary sectors.

The University is committed to developing its postgraduate and post-qualifying level studies, and as part of this Community Education within the University has launched two major new programmes - an MSc in Applied Professional Studies and a BA in Literacies.

The MSc Applied Professional Studies programme is already attracting interest from all over Scotland, the UK and overseas. An introductory workshop for the course, which offers interdisciplinary distance learning opportunities, involved participants from the fields of teaching, further education, health, social work and community learning and development, eager to hear about the programme and its focus on the development of more effective practice through inquiry-based learning.

"When you work and deliver services to the public you have to keep up to date with national and international practice and be able to reflect on and think creatively about your own and other practitioners’ contexts. The MSc Applied Professional Studies has a balance between self directed and collective support based within an interdisciplinary professional framework," said Pete Glen, manager of The Corner Young People’s Health and Information Service in Dundee and also a participant on the new programme.

The new course has been welcomed by major local employers.

"The MSc Applied Professional Studies is exactly the kind of programme required for those working in the Public Sector building on a commitment to professional practice and the demonstration of competence and enabling practitioners to gain new insight and skill in the development of sustainable services," said Stewart Murdoch, Director of the Leisure and Communities Department of Dundee City Council.

The start of the new MSc is a milestone in the development of the School of Education, Social Work and Community Education’s postgraduate portfolio of programmes and is the result of 2 years of planning an interdisciplinary Masters programme drawing from consultations with a wide range of stakeholders.

The new BA in Literacies programme is part of the Teaching Qualification in Adult Literacies initiative coming out of the Scottish Executive’s Adult Literacies and Numeracy in Scotland (ALNiS) report. As part of a Scottish-wide consortium, the University of Dundee has developed and is running over the next year a pilot literacies teaching course for 55 adult literacies tutors from across Scotland.

"This is a really exciting development e enhancement of Literacies practice in Scotland," said Christine Barber, the TQAL Programme Coordinator based at the University of Dundee.

Notes to Editors

Background to Community Education within the School of Education, Social Work and Community Education, University of Dundee:

As the largest provider of Community Learning and Development training (formerly Community Education) in Scotland we work closely with our partners in the design, development and delivery of our portfolio of qualifying and post-qualifying programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. We are the home of the Scottish Community Learning & Development Work-based and Part-time Training Consortium, funded through the Scottish Funding Council, a project that has been funded to look at the efficacy and development of work-based training in Scotland. The School also houses the Scottish Centre for Research in Community Learning & Development. Additionally we are also part of an FE/HE consortium responsible for the design and delivery of the Teaching Qualification in Adult Literacies (TQAL) linked to the Adult Literacies and Numeracy in Scotland Report (ALNiS) (Scottish Executive 2004). We are also actively involved in a range of research and training consultancy projects within the CLD sector.

For more information contact
Mike Naulty
Senior Lecturer
Community Education
School of Education, Social Work and Community Education
University of Dundee
Gardyne Road
Dundee
DD5 1NY

Tel: 01382 464388
Email: m.naulty@dundee.ac.uk

For media enquiries contact:

Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk