These notes were originally prepared for fellow tutors as a first contribution to a debate, and never intended for wider circulation, but feedback from their first accidental appearance justifies their minimally revised re appearance, and requests from a number of universities to adapt and re print them. So you may have seen them somewhere else already! recognising work at master's level is one of those i can't describe it, but i know it when i see it situations. Unfortunately, that is not very much use to programme participants who want some idea of what to expect and what to work to.

These pragmatic and potentially prejudiced notes may eventually lead to increased consistency in marking from the tutors' side, and a clearer idea of expectations from the participants' side but so far all they do is to articulate some of the ways in which i go about recognising master's level work. It is artificial in the sense that it is adapted to a very specialised purpose, like legal drafting or even poetry. Most of the great works of literature, history, philosophy, and most official reports would not pass muster as m level writing. Of course, whether any thing written recently for a master's would count as any of the above is also a matter of debate! i know this is unfashionable and probably politically incorrect, but in practice i find it difficult to get past it. Literacy is not a sufficient condition to meet m level requirements, but in my book it is a necessary one. If the work does not meet these basic criteria the singular is criterion but no one studies greek any more , i find it difficult to look past the expression to the content.

More important, i believe it is reasonable to expect that anyone who goes around with the letters ma after their name which places them within some kind of sloppy ed. Intellectual elite has an obligation to be able to express themselves clearly and literately. On the whole, this does not mean, for example, writing a section about each specified outcome. It is almost impossible to produce a coherently argued piece of work on this basis. Evidence for the outcomes comes from how you write about the topic of the assignment.

Take, for example, the following specified outcome from personal and group tutoring a module on a former ma in learning and teaching at de montfort university uk: 2: understands ethical issues associated with the tutorial system you do not have to provide a list of the ethical issues posed. Instead, if you were discussing a particular case in tutoring, for example, you might be saying: the student's refusal to allow me to take up the allegations of sexual harassment against another student posed a dilemma. On the one hand was my assurance of confidentiality which on reflection i should not perhaps have given so readily: on the other was the reality that i could take no effective action without divulging that she had complained. This shows that you are using the outcome, as it were, for practical purposes, and constitutes evidence of understanding. A submission imbued with similar understanding, and no contrary evidence of ignoring the ethical dimension, would amply demonstrate the achievement of the outcome although of course the narrative does have to be complemented with more scholarly underpinnings. After all, if the outcomes are merely artificial notions which can only be addressed by taking them in isolation from real practice, they are a pretty useless device.

They have in fact been constructed to reflect real world issues, and they can therefore be demonstrated through discussion of such issues. I sometimes read journal articles which seem to need three references to assert that grass is or can be green. It may take the form of references to previous writers, or it may be the evidence of your own experience or your own arguments, but if it is needed, it will be cited in such a way as to enable me to find it if i wish. I expect theory: more to the point, i expect theory to be used to answer some questions and to pose others, rather than simply regurgitated for its own sake. I'm really going to stick my neck out now: for what it is worth, i expect a dozen or more references for an m level assignment.

But i do not expect such evidence to be cited uncritically, on the basis that, if someone else has already said it and managed to get it published, it must be true! see the next section: by critical , i do not mean that it pulls people and ideas to pieces and puts them down. I mean that it does not take ideas for granted, but subjects them to critical examination. In a very minor way, the previous two sentences serve as an example, because i have defined my terms.

We work in a world where knowledge advances in large measure through critical debate, which presupposes that terms and concepts are defined. Do they mean the same thing? education itself is an enormously problematic concept. I distrust dictionary definitions: at this level we need to know what a concept means to someone who is working with it, not merely how it is used in everyday speech.

I expect to find the writer exposing the potential and limitations of an idea or perspective, and pointing to the consequences of using it as the basis for argument or investigation. At the very least, i expect some remark acknowledging the complexity or problematic nature of some of the concepts used where applicable, of course there are some simple things left in life!

4.1 it explores implicit values

practice in education and most other professional contexts is full of taken for granted common sense values about good practice. But at master's level you are expected to dig behind these self evident truths, to expose the assumptions behind them and to entertain the potential alternatives. I'm not an unqualified fan of stephen brookfield but if you need to know more about this, his idea of hunting assumptions is a useful tool: see chapter 1 of his teaching for critical thinking jossey bass, 2012: what is critical thinking? ask why? or so what? about everything. This is the respect in which an academic article or master's submission differs from a report. A report has to come out with recommendations, and may reasonably rely on a consensual foundation to build on. M level writing can indeed has to pull those foundations to pieces to see what they are made of, even if it means that they are no longer strong enough to build any recommendations on.

To put it another way in discourses other than the academic, a question has an answer. I expect the writer to be able to treat some sources if not cynically, at least symptomatically. This is easily understood as an amplification of the dictum, well, he would say that, wouldn't he? rice davies, 1963 .

why would he say that? does this author have an axe to grind? i am labouring this point because it is the quality of master's level work which is most frequently lacking. And it is difficult if not impossible to get to m level without it in this subject area, at least. It simply means that there has to be a coherent thread running through it, pursuing an idea or the implications of an issue in practice. It may be an examination of the consequences for curriculum design and teaching method of having large classes implications in practice , or the potential and limitations of learning contracts in undergraduate engineering programmes pursuit of an idea.

History of Photography Research Paper

Bitty exercises in the illustration of discrete outcomes are unlikely to achieve this to any real extent: it is only as you take up the ideas of the module and relate them to the real world that they are tested in your own experience. Most people do not have too much trouble with this, and they amass a great deal of material to support their argument: but at master's level this is not enough. So you also need to amass evidence against it, and to take account of counter arguments and alternative positions, discussing either why they are not applicable in this case, or why you find them inadequate, inappropriate or morally reprehensible. A corollary of the above is that an assignment at this level needs to be sufficiently tightly defined to enable you to say something worthwhile within the word limit. As you already know from papers in journals, it is perfectly acceptable to acknowledge that a point requires discussion, and then to say that you are not going to deal with it here. This serves two purposes: it enables you to keep the focus on what really matters, and avoids a shallow, skimming paper, and it forestalls any criticism that, you have not mentioned.