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Primary education: listening and observing
Primary education: listening and observing

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

Introduction and guidance

This free badged course, Primary education: listening and observing, lasts 24 hours, with 8 sessions. Each session should take you around 3 hours. The eight sessions are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:

  1. Observing and listening to primary school children
  2. Observing in the playground
  3. Observing learning
  4. Learning at home
  5. Connected children
  6. Computing in schools
  7. Creative support for children’s learning
  8. Adults and lifelong learning in the primary school.

The course is for anyone who wants to upgrade their knowledge of the primary school sector and ethical practices in education settings. It presents a set of practice-focused readings and observational readings. You will learn about small-scale research in the primary school and observe children’s play and classroom learning, and listen to interviews with school staff and children. You will also explore cyber bullying and the primary school curriculum.

You will be able to test your learning in the interactive quizzes, of which Sessions 4 and 8 will provide you with an opportunity to earn a badge to demonstrate your new skills. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

  • show knowledge of how to plan and carry out sensitive observation and information gathering appropriate to educational settings
  • use appropriate small-scale research methods to understand and support children’s learning
  • understand ethical practices in educational settings
  • use online and digital technologies for personal and professional learning.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each session, you will find a link to the next session. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.