I hope that BA ECC will continue to be a springboard for others as it was for me

I graduated from BA Education, Culture and Childhood in 2018, and have since trained as a Speech and Language Therapist. Back when I first began looking at universities, I was unsure about what route I wanted to take with my career. I was certain that I wanted to work with children, but I wasn’t ready to commit to a specific pathway like teaching. The BA ECC lit up on my radar as a more general foundation in child development and educational theory, keeping my postgraduate options open.

As I had hoped, the varied course content provided a broad base of knowledge and academic skills. Over the three years of study I learned about the sociology, philosophy and psychology of education, and applied these to various fascinating examples of policy and practice from around the world. Our assignments also allowed us to choose topics or tangents to pursue further, and this flexibility let me focus on areas relevant to the postgraduate pathways I was considering.

The small course size made it much easier to bond with my course mates, and this created a really solid support network. My fondest memories are of my friends and me hunkered down in the library to work through difficult topics or assignment briefs together. To this day one course mate and I send each other job applications to proofread! Having a smaller cohort also created more opportunities to share our individual experiences, which grounded theoretical teaching in real-world scenarios.

Actively reflecting on our experiences was encouraged throughout the course. Having an established foundation in these self-development skills has been invaluable during my Speech and Language Therapy placements, in which I applied reflective learning to work through clinical challenges. This ethos has also helped to build my resilience, teaching me to find direction for growth in difficult experiences.

Chloe Jameson

Education, Culture and Childhood BA

I hope that BA ECC will continue to be a springboard for others as it was for me, and that new students will have the similarly memorable experiences to those I look back on. Although I am leaving Sheffield after five years of studying, I wish all the best to the department that saw me through my undergraduate years, and to anyone joining the course anew!