If you have a passion for international development or education, or simply want to learn more, why not explore some of our options to take your interest further?

• BBC World Class
• Further reading
• Courses and qualifications

BBC World Class

BBC World Class is a partnership project launched in February 2005, which facilitates UK schools in twinning with schools around the world, especially in the developing world. The cornerstone of the project is the World Class website where teachers can find information and inspiration to help them liaise with our partners who get them twinned.

World Class popularises school twinning, giving children in the UK opportunities to communicate directly with children around the world. School twinning promotes global citizenship, preparing today’s British children to play their part in the rapidly developing global society of tomorrow, and helps social cohesion in the UK as children increase their understanding of diverse cultures.

Through school twinning children have an opportunity to discover what might bring them together – and what might keep them apart.

Further reading

• Poverty and Development into the 21st Century
  Tim Allen and Alan Thomas (editors)
  Oxford University Press
   
• Unbound: from Independence to the global
  information age
  Gurcharan Das
  Anchor
   
• Being Indian: inside the real India
  Pavan K. Varma
  Arrow
   
• In Spite of the Gods: the strange rise of modern India
  Edward Luce
  Little, Brown
   
• Temptations of the West: how to be modern in India, Pakistan and beyond
  Pankaj Mishra
  Picador
   
• Changing India: bourgeois revolution on the subcontinent
  Robert W. Stern
  Cambridge University Press
   
• India After Gandhi: the history of the world's largest democracy
  Ramachandra Guha
  Macmillan

Courses and qualifications

Open University courses are the main 'building blocks' of our qualifications. You can take a single course or take several to build towards an Open University diploma or degree.

Which level of study is most suitable for you?

• New to studying social sciences
• Have some study experience
• Interested in a postgraduate qualification

New to studying social sciences

An Introduction to the Social Sciences (DD100)

The social sciences are about people, how they act individually and how they act collectively. This course tackles everyday issues in an approachable and accessible ways, so that you can build on what you already know and draw on your own experience.

DD100 will help you understand some of the big issues in the contemporary world, such as changes in family, work and identity; risk and the environment; and the impact of globalisation. Course texts and carefully structured workbooks help you to improve your study skills. After this course, further study in the social sciences could lead to employment opportunities in a wide range of occupations.

Have some study experience

Childhood (U212)

What does childhood mean in today’s world? Do popular images of children as innocent and dependent match the reality of young people’s lives at home, in school and in work? In what ways is childhood affected by poverty, ill-health and adversity? Do children have different rights from adults, and if so why? How are modern lifestyles and technologies altering their play and their identities? What are children's own roles in shaping their childhood? These are some of the questions considered in this interdisciplinary introduction to childhood and youth studies, covering the ages from birth to 18 and including audio-visual case studies in three contrasting parts of the world.

International Development (U213)

International development in its many manifestations presents the world with some of its most pressing challenges. This course introduces the main issues associated with meeting those challenges and, in so doing, looks critically at ideas about inequality at local and global levels and the relationship between the levels. The first part introduces the main issues, placing them in their historical context. The second part examines three themes: Transitions (offering a choice between sustainability and displacement); Poverty and Inequality; and Technology and Knowledge.

Living in a Globalised World (DD205)

It is commonplace now to say that the world has gone global. Whenever we buy food and clothes, listen to music, or watch the news, we can see how different parts of the world, often thousands of miles apart, are connected together. And with these multiple and various connections comes a sense of the world as being an extraordinarily complex place. This course will help you to understand that complexity, giving you some key geographical concepts which help to make sense of the processes and patterns shaping our globalised world.

A World of Whose Making? (DU301)

The globalisation of the world economy is at the same time a process of political change. But how can we best understand and analyse international developments such as the role of the World Trade Organisation, the power of the USA, or global contests over religion, culture and rights?

What are the main forms of international order and disorder, and how are they changing? The course provides the tools of political and economic analysis needed to answer these questions as well as an historical and conceptual understanding of states and security; the contested place of religion, culture and norms at an international and global level; and the role of technology, inequality and networks.

The course concludes with a review of models of world order and debates about how world order is changing. A central feature of the course is its wide range of voices from different parts of the world.

Postgraduate qualitifcation

MSc in Development Management (F11)

This MSc is part of our Development Management programme, which also offers a Postgraduate Certificate in Development Management (C48) and Postgraduate Diploma in Development Management (D37), is for:

• professionals in project management and those who have responsibility for development initiatives in government, non-governmental organisations, international and inter-governmental agencies and public and private enterprises
• people who intend to work in those areas, or who have an interest in public action for development
• those who want to combine important elements of development and management
• those who want to expand their conceptual and practical skills by taking an international perspective on management

Content last updated: 19/04/2007