Religious Education and History

This will fully qualify you to teach second-level religious studies and history in just four years. You’ll gain valuable and extensive experience, including peer-teaching, team-teaching, and school-based placement. The course is comprised of a variety of interesting core and optional topics, with an emphasis throughout on teamwork, leadership, communication, and creativity—skills that will serve you well in a teaching career and also transfer to a number of other professions. You’ll also be encouraged to develop the skills to work in contexts of cultural and religious diversity, preparing you for the modern-day teaching environment. Throughout the course, you’ll cover four integrated areas: Foundational and Professional Studies in Education: We offer a student-friendly, supportive, open, dynamic, and practical approach to the study of education. The diverse, exciting, engaging, and challenging study of education and religion education is reflected in the modules on offer. Teaching, including school placements: One of the most exciting and rewarding elements of the course is our hands-on approach to school placement. Over the four years of the course, you’ll have an opportunity to gain valuable and extensive experience within a range of teaching and learning environments, including engagement in observation of practice, micro-teaching, peer-teaching, team-teaching, and school-based placements (in both primary and post-primary sectors). You’ll be supported throughout your professional development by experienced school placement tutors, school-based cooperating teachers, and METIS (a custom-built web-based environment for school placement). Theology, Religious Studies, and Ethics: These elements provide a strong foundation for teaching religious education in second-level schools and meet the subject criteria required by the Teaching Council. The specific subjects include ethics; philosophy; Scripture; systematic theology; and world religions. You’ll be encouraged to critically engage with a wide range of topics and develop the skills to work in contexts of cultural and religious diversity. Our aim is to provide you, as a student of history, with the material and methodologies that will equip you to discover, examine, and interpret some of the major issues and questions that will inevitably arise from your studies. The course offers a broad range of modules covering topics on Irish, European, and world history from the Medieval to the Modern period.