Applied Child Psychology Keele University

Overview

The Applied Child Psychology degree from Keele University students will benefit from the expertise of established expert researchers on topic areas including child social development (e.g., bullying and peer relationships), cognitive development (e.g., theory of mind, attention in autism and ADHD), education (e.g. girls and science and enhancing collaborative learning in the classroom) and more.

The Applied Child Psychology will be of interest to anyone, UK-based or international, who currently works with or is interested in careers supporting children, from infancy to adolescence, in a professional or personal capacity in education, healthcare, childcare, forensic settings, such as courts, and leisure or voluntary settings, such as sports clubs and youth groups.

It will prepare you to design and conduct psychological research to assess children’s physical, cognitive and emotional development. This encompasses everything from memory capacity to how they learn language, use reasoning or imagination, feel and express their emotions, and interact with their peers and with adults.

Teaching is very much linked to practice, with multiple opportunities to work on research with other students and staff, capitalising on our expertise in areas as diverse as sensory and brain development disorders, such as ADHD and deafness; bullying and peer relationships in schools; legal topics like child witnesses; topics associated with gender; topics like religion and beliefs.

If you choose the optional placement, you will gain valuable experience, observing and reflecting on the ways in which different practitioners approach children’s issues, for example, within a school, charity or youth group. In legal settings, for instance, child psychologists are often consulted to make children feel more comfortable socially, physically and morally when testifying in court.

Career opportunities:

This MSc has been designed to provide the psychological knowledge, tools and skills to work with children from infancy to young adulthood. This could lead to careers working with children and young people across the public, private and third sector, for example, working in education, research, social services, health services, health promotion, policy or advocacy.

Should you wish to continue your research, you will be well placed to pursue an academic or research career in developmental or educational psychology, for example, or by studying for a PhD or through relevant work experience.

The research expertise and range of transferable skills you will develop on this MSc, such as decision making, critical thinking, communication skills, data collection, analysis and research design are relevant to almost any profession, making you highly attractive to future employers.

Roles related to your degree include:

• Charity work/consultation

• Researcher

• Public health advisor

• Residential social care worker

• Special needs teaching assistant

• Teaching assistant

• Therapist assistant

• Wellbeing trainer