Professional Practice in Higher Education MA

This flexible Master’s course is designed to support your continued professional development through a range of module options, and offers both intermediate qualifications and external (HEA) accredited status (for those with suitable teaching practice in HE only). You'll choose modules based on your role and interests, and study over a three to five year period.

As a staff member or research student, the PPHE programme will help you meet the key challenges of working in the rapidly changing world of higher education, while gaining credit and postgraduate qualifications for your professional development.

These challenges – of teaching, supporting student learning, employability, sustainability, new technologies, team management, enterprise, quality assurance and external accountability – range across the whole business of higher education, and can rarely be addressed in isolation. They raise many questions about how best to enhance teaching and research within particular contexts, and about how managers and administrators can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of current practices, not least in terms of addressing students’ needs and aspirations, enriching their learning experiences, and raising the enduring value of their learning outcomes.

Overview

By sharing ideas, knowledge and expertise about our professional practices, we can deepen our understanding of the challenges we face, and realise opportunities to make improvements through innovations and the adoption of best practices.

The PPHE programme will help you evidence your commitment to professional development, and enhance the quality of your work, as well as the development of higher education in your workplace.

Career development

The PPHE programme is designed to support the development of both academic and professional staff, teaching, managing or supporting HE students, at a time when evidence of professional development is increasingly expected of all staff, not least for new appointments and promotions.

Some of the modules are accredited with the Higher Education Academy and there is the opportunity, if a participant’s professional practice entails appropriate responsibilities, to gain Associate/Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (A/FHEA), a nationally transferable professional status.

New academic staff at Bath Spa will take a core selection of the modules to gain a specific PGCHE qualification and FHEA status as part of their contract, but are welcome to continue with the PPHE programme to gain higher qualifications, as are those who have gained HEA fellowships through PRO-SPACE or similar recognition schemes.

In this course, students can also exit with PGCert and PGDip awards.