| AQF Level |
Level 8 Graduate Certificate |
| Overview and Aims of the Program |
The purpose of the program is to provide a graduate level disciplinary foundation in Gender Studies to students with degrees from outside of the department, faculty, or university. The mode of delivery will be on-line, with face-to-face participation in the undergraduate and research program invited for those seeking a richer engagement with the Gender Studies community of scholars. It could be taken part time over one year or full time in Semester Two of each year. Important and distinctive features of the program include its flexibility and interdisciplinary focus, in meeting the needs of students with diverse employment and academic trajectories. |
| Graduate Capabilities |
The Graduate Capabilities Framework articulates the fundamentals that underpin all of Macquarie’s academic programs. It expresses these as follows:
Cognitive capabilities
(K) discipline specific knowledge and skills
(T) critical, analytical and integrative thinking
(P) problem solving and research capability
(I) creative and innovative
Interpersonal or social capabilities
(C) effective communication
(E) engaged and ethical local and global citizens
(A) socially and environmentally active and responsible
Personal capabilities
(J) capable of professional and personal judgement and initiative
(L) commitment to continuous learning |
| Program Learning Outcomes |
By the end of this program it is anticipated you should be able to:
1. identify the features of Gender Studies as a broad and interdisciplinary field of study (K)
2. identify the key figures and texts of Gender Studies as a field of study (K)
3. investigate the points of connection and disconnection between Gender Studies as a field of study, and the social movement of feminism (K, T, J)
4. articulate a coherent, developed argument on the question of the status of Gender Studies as an academic discipline (K, J)
5. articulate a coherent, developed argument on the question of the status of structural accounts of the gender order of power (e.g. ‘patriarchy’) (K, P, C)
6. articulate a coherent, developed argument on the question of the status of gender as a concept in popular culture and in critical thinking (K, P, C)
7. analyse a variety of texts (print, oral, film, multimedia) and data sources critically within their historical, social and discursive contexts (K, P, C)
8. explain the complexity and significance of a number of key issues in contemporary Gender Studies (K, P, E)
9. explore the complexity and importance of cross-cultural dialogue on gender issues (T, P, E)
10. examine the relationship between forms of knowledge and forms of everyday living (T, C, E, J). |
| Learning and Teaching Methods |
Units in the Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies program use a mix of learning and teaching methods. The teaching is informed by the educational philosophy of Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) which encourages students to consider themselves, appropriately at600 and 800 level, as active researchers. In the specialist seminars and in assessment, students are given the opportunity to define an issue and to draw on their own resources and those of the course to find the means to respond to it adequately at the appropriate postgraduate level. They are positioned as active participants in the creation and re-creation of knowledge, rather than passive recipients. Modes of instruction include formal lectures at 600 level but students are not expected to listen in silence and absorb knowledge mechanically. In seminars students comprise a small group, and in-class activities may include joint internet research (seminars are held in a computer laboratory with flexible seating arrangements). In EBL, the scene of learning is open to all of the situations in which knowledge has value, including knowledge for an ethical engagement in the world of self and others, and knowledge for its own sake. EBL celebrates the educational values of open-ended, exploratory learning with a focus on the process of thinking and co-creation of knowledge rather than the reduction of knowledge to a given set of products. An openness to the dynamics of thought and imagination means also that the purity of disciplinary truths is tempered with interdisciplinary cross-fertilisations and the possibility of new ideas. A high value is put on democracy within education, particularly in relation to overcoming the hierarchy of teacher (as expert in possession of knowledge) and learner (as novice lacking in knowledge). Here the design of new learning spaces becomes a priority so that flexibility, peer collaboration, and teacher interaction more than podium-delivered lecturing can take place.*
*See the paper of the Director of the Gender Studies program (Inaugural Macquarie University Learning and Teaching Fellow, 2008): Lattas, J. "Inquiry Based Learning: a Tertiary Perspective" in Agora (the quarterly journal of the History Teachers' Association of Victoria), February 2009 |
| Assessment |
Assessment forms range from on-line multiple choice quizzes, to essays with self-designed questions, incorporating summaries of set academic texts and/or media resources, to research projects involving proposals for a workplace research project or higher degree research thesis. Each unit in the Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies offers formative (mid-semester) as well as summative (end-semester) assessment tasks designed to build strength on a key component of the final piece of work on the back of customised feedback. Active student participation in the form of regular contributions to discussion in-class and/or on iLearn is a crucially important part of learning in Gender Studies and it is features in assessment in all units in the Graduate Certificate.
Students are encouraged to acquire and demonstrate the learning outcomes of the Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies program in the different types of assessment.
Knowledge of the discipline of Gender Studies is achieved firstly through the weekly quizzes that test comprehension of key readings (advanced readings set specifically to foster the higher order intellectual grasp appropriate at 600 and 800 level) and lecture content in all units. The regular specialist seminars and/or topic-focused online discussion on the unit websites enable students to practise their formulation of responses to unit material, developing higher skills in interpersonal communication and contributing to an open-ended, media-enriched exploration of gender issues. Through the specifically media-focused assessment tasks, students are guided in their analysis of any number of Gender Studies resources (print, oral, film, multimedia) and expected to contextualise and assess the value of such information within their historical, social and theoretical contexts. The complexity of cross-cultural dialogue on gender-related social problems, and the importance of meaningful, practical solutions and policy responses to them, is stressed in tasks designed to encourage independent research while students draw on the interdisciplinary knowledge and theories introduced in each unit (at advanced levels throughout the program). A developed sense of how gendered social institutions and practices (family forms, workplaces, cultural norms, media technologies) influence and shape individual values, decisions, and behaviour is fostered in students. Here they come to appreciate more fully and explain more effectively to others the relationship between forms of knowledge and forms of everyday living, in all their ethical, political and cultural dimensions. The assessment regime across the program encourages and rewards independent thought strengthened by complex critical, intellectual and ethical engagements with the carefully selected material offering an advanced yet comprehensive grasp of the discipline. |
| Recognition of Prior Learning |
Macquarie University may recognise prior formal, informal and non-formal learning for the purpose of granting credit towards, or admission into, a program. The recognition of these forms of learning is enabled by the University’s Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) Policy and its associated Procedures and Guidelines. For recognition of prior informal and non-formal learning, please refer to the relevant RPL Plan, which describes the evidential requirements and approval processes for recognising prior learning for entry or credit in this program.
For undergraduate RPL plans visit www.goto.mq.edu.au/nonschoolrpl
For postgraduate RPL plans visit www.goto.mq.edu.au/pgrpl |
| Support for Learning |
Macquarie University aspires to be an inclusive and supportive community of learners where all students are given the opportunity to meet their academic and personal goals. The University offers a comprehensive range of free and accessible student support services which include academic advice, counselling and psychological services, advocacy services and welfare advice, careers and employment, disability services and academic skills workshops amongst others. There is also a bulk billing medical service located on campus.
Further information can be found at www.students.mq.edu.au/support/
Campus Wellbeing contact details:
Phone: +61 2 9850 7497
Email: campuswellbeing@mq.edu.au
www.students.mq.edu.au/support/health_and_wellbeing/contact_us |
| Program Standards and Quality |
The program is subject to an ongoing comprehensive process of quality review in accordance with a pre-determined schedule that complies with the Higher Education Standards Framework. The review is overseen by Macquarie University's peak academic governance body, the Academic Senate and takes into account feedback received from students, staff and external stakeholders. |
| Graduate Destinations and Employability |
This program offers expertise on a wide range of matters that specifically involve gender (the relations between men and women, both interpersonal and institutional; the shaping of identity and body image, the intersections of gender with class and race; the impact of discrimination, and the possibility of social change), which concern many fields of employment. These include:
• education (classroom teaching and curriculum development on a primary, secondary and tertiary level, policy and management issues)
• health and welfare
• political or public policy-making
• media writing and advertising
• management of private and public enterprises (sexual harassment and equal opportunity policy, issues of power, personnel management and office culture), and more.
From our experience, the Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies has proved useful in a range of employment opportunities, from promotion and upskilling to career change. While it does not directly provide entry to Higher Degree Research, achievement in Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies is taken into consideration in approvals for entry to the Bachelor of Philosophy, the Master of Research and other higher degrees in Gender Studies and Sociology. |
| Assessment Regulations |
This program is subject to Macquarie University regulations, including but not limited to those specified in the Assessment Policy, Academic Honesty Policy, the Final Examination Policy and relevant University Rules. For all approved University policies, procedures, guidelines and schedules visit www.mq.edu.au/policy. |
| Accreditation |
This is an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) accredited qualification.
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