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Postgraduate Certificate in Conflict and Development - Learning Outcomes

Educational aims

This qualification aims to:

  • provide you with a grounding in the basic concepts and frameworks of development management
  • develop your understanding of the complex origins and forms of conflict, and to promote your grasp of key skills for making good interventions in conflicts
  • enable you to reflect on and improve your own practice with respect to conflict and development.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

On completion of the qualification you will have an understanding of:

  • conflicting interpretations and implications of development
  • the contexts – from local to global – in which development takes place
  • key issues in contemporary development
  • key theories, discourses and debates relating to: the nature and dynamics of conflict; the roots of conflict; ways of intervening in and managing conflict; the relationships between conflict, management and development.

Cognitive skills

On completion of the qualification you will be able to:

  • engage critically with the literature on development and development action
  • evaluate critically the dominant discourse on development and on action for meeting development challenges
  • critically assess theories and discourses relating to conflict, and the values, meanings, interests and assumptions that inform them
  • analyse the roots of conflict, interventions in conflict and their impact.

Practical and/or professional skills

On completion of the qualification you will be able to:

  • demonstrate critical and practical awareness of how concerns of equality, social justice and inclusion might be incorporated into action for development alongside established concerns such as economic growth and ecological sustainability
  • reflect critically on development
  • identify the needs, interests and agendas of actors involved in conflict and its management
  • use tools for assessing conflicts
  • identify, frame and evaluate interventions that manage conflict to achieve development ends 
  • participate actively and critically in intervention decision-making.

Key skills

On completion of the qualification you will be able to:

  • read, interpret and manipulate data that are supplied in a variety of tabular and diagrammatic formats
  • use maps and diagrams to build up shared understandings of conflict and its management
  • develop theoretically informed, evidence based arguments
  • communicate your own analyses and assessments of conflict and its management effectively to others.

Teaching, learning and assessment methods

To help you develop your knowledge and understanding and to nurture your skills the modules offer:

  • core teaching texts and study guides
  • extensive guided reading
  • case studies, using text and audio-visual media
  • audio and visual resources
  • face-to-face and online tutorials
  • activities, individual and group, giving opportunities to develop and practise a range of skills
  • opportunities for you to reflect on your own practice.

Throughout there is support from your tutor.

Assessment is carried out through tutor-marked assignments and an examination at the end of each module.

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