PgCert Academic Practice

The PgCert Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication is for everyone who teaches and/or supports student learning in arts higher education. The course attracts applicants from the whole range of job families across UAL.

You will join a community of colleagues with experience and expertise in a range of disciplines and educational modes. You will have opportunities to learn from each other whilst interrogating and enhancing your own teaching and learning practice.

You will learn about contemporary higher education contexts, discussing the role of universities in a rapidly changing world. You will explore the relationship between policy, society and theory, while considering what this means for your own practice.

UAL is committed to social justice and to becoming an anti-racist university. The PgCert is envisaged as a catalyst for institutional change. Through reflecting on your positionality and its influence on your actions, you will identify spaces for inclusive interventions with the potential to transform student experience.

You will study theories underpinning pedagogy and intersectional social justice, which will enrich your practice through ongoing application to your context, culminating in your own small-scale research project.

The PgCert is a benchmark national qualification for teachers in higher education, and as such is an important step in academic career development. Through the PgCert you will gain professional recognition via AdvanceHE as an Associate Fellow (AFHEA) and prepare a portfolio to support a subsequent application for Fellowship (FHEA).

Upon successful completion of the PgCert, you can choose to continue your Academic Practice studies by undertaking a further 120 credits to gain the MA in Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication.

Unit 2: Inclusive practices

This unit will bring your focus back onto the micro-context of your own beliefs, values, and actions. You will be empowered to think deeply about your own positionality and how this affects those around you.

Through engaging with key ideas and theories such as intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, anti-racism and more, you will develop an understanding of how to embed expanded inclusivity into everyday professional life.

You will design an artefact that applies theoretical understanding within your practice, enacting an individual, and hence an institutional, change.

Unit 3: Action research project

You will gain an understanding of action research as well as learning about other research methods. You will design and develop your own small-scale, social justice oriented, action research project.

Your project will stem from an issue identified in your work context. You will explore the literature pertinent to this issue, design and conduct an appropriate intervention, and explore ways of evaluating the change with your stakeholders (students and/or colleagues).

For assessment you will present your project and findings back to the wider cohort, maximising practice-sharing and fostering potential future collaborative opportunities.

Credit and award requirements

The course is credit-rated at 60 credits. On successfully completing the course, you will gain a PgCert Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication.

Under the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, a PgCert is Level 7. All units must be passed in order to achieve the PgCert. The classification of the award is derived by averaging the marks across all 3 units.

Assessment methods

We invite you to demonstrate your learning in a range of ways that reflect the variety of learning outcomes and the specialisms of arts disciplines. This includes blogs and sketchbooks, peer observation, peer review, peer and self-assessment, creation of artefacts, essays, case studies, presentations and documentation of practice in visual and written formats.

You will learn how to use Workflow to create and edit a digital portfolio of your coursework. Your portfolio stores your work in progress and you will submit it for summative assessment at the end of each unit.

AP(E)L – Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning

It may be possible to receive credits for previous courses (admissions with academic credit, or AAC) or for experiential learning (Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning, or AP(E)L).

You need to identify the units you are claiming credit for and complete an AAC or AP(E)L application form. You’ll need to demonstrate that you’ve achieved equivalent learning outcomes in your previous course of study, or through experiential learning.

For full criteria and the number of credits that you can make a claim for, download the Guide to AAC and APL / APEL (Word 35KB).

• 2024-25 AAC Application (Word 40KB)
• 2024-25 APL / APEL Application (Word 42KB)
• PgCert Academic Practice unit descriptors (Word 53KB)

Step 2. Complete an online application

You will need to create an account using an external (non-UAL) email address and upload:

• A copy of your passport
  • If this is a non-UK passport please also upload a copy of your residence permit.
• A copy of the certificate for your highest level qualification
• A copy of your completed authorisation form (saved as a document) must be uploaded in the reference section.

External applicants

The PgCert is not open to external applicants in 2024/25.

Opportunities for all

UAL is committed to diversity, individuality and equality. We support all students, including those who have dyslexia, long term health conditions, mental health issues, physical or sensory impairments or autism spectrum disorders.