BSc (Hons) Criminology with Integrated Foundation Year

Foundation in Knowledge and Skills

This module utilises your personal experience as a basis for enhancing skills and knowledge relevant to academic, professional, and personal development.

The module will support and encourage you to engage with higher education by developing academic skills and building confidence in their practical application.  It is designed to enhance employability and efficacy within the workplace.

The module aims to build resilience, communication skills, self-confidence and reflective ability.

Being and Feeling

This module provides an integrated introductory approach to the areas of being and feeling. The module will provide an introduction to the historical foundations of being and feeling, as well as important associated findings.

Prominent schools of thought about how the mind should be conceived and studied will be explored.  The areas of introspection, behaviourism, and Gestalt psychology will be explored.

Thinking and Developing

This module aims to provide you with an integrated introductory approach to the areas of thinking and developing. The module will provide you with an in-depth understanding of development, cognition, and evolution.

Project

This module includes a combination of teamwork and independent study. Within this module, there will be an opportunity to foster innovation and cooperation that will be crucial for your transition into degree studies. Peer support and supervision will enable you to conduct and report your learning, demonstrating strong academic skills.

The module will enable you to focus on an area of interest that is associated with your future specialisation or past experience. Students will be supported to implement an analytic approach to present a project on their area of interest.

Social Minds: Exploring Human Interaction

The module will explore the experience of relationships through the processes related to forming an impression of people, feeling attracted or not to them, wanting to be their friend, getting to know them and forming a relationship with them, through a variety of behaviours, such as approaching them, talking to them, and meeting them socially.

Psychological theories and empirical findings from investigations into impression formation will be introduced, and methodology will be explored.

Thinking Like a Social Scientist: Study and Research Skills

This module will introduce you to research skills that are essential for your academic success and growth. It introduces you to the basics of data analysis and covers key concepts in time management and teamwork. You’ll develop your critical thinking skills to enhance your ability to present convincing arguments in written work, and your academic reading skills will also develop to enable you to access complex scientific reports.

Additionally, the module will teach you how to produce high-quality assessments, including creating references and citations using APA style, presenting information effectively, and writing well-structured essays.

Criminal Law I

This module introduces you to the different aspects of criminal law, which examines the theory underpinning criminal law and the elements of criminal liability, as well as providing an understanding of a range of criminal offences and the ability to analyse and evaluate related case law.

You will also continue to develop legal reasoning, research and referencing skills.

Facilitating Wellbeing: Positive Perspectives

Based on the discipline of Positive Psychology, the module will explore the experience of living well, relating the need to understand well-being, emotions, motivation, aspirations and goals to self-development, personality traits, needs for achievement, self-efficacy, and self-esteem, environmental influences and the enhancement of well-being.

Psychological theories and empirical findings from investigations into needs, motivation and traits will be introduced, as will the use of selected nonparametric statistics.

This module aims to give you an understanding of a broad area of everyday functioning and experience in terms of the behaviours, feelings, attitudes, and mental processes involved in that experience.

The module also aims to use functional analysis so that a broad experience can be broken down into a series of questions concerning the sub-functions and behaviours involved, allowing the psychological constructs and theories that are associated with those behaviours to be elucidated and explored.  Exploration will involve appropriate methods to investigate what psychological constructs and theories relate to relevant behaviours and function.

The module will explore the experience of positive psychology relating the need to understand one’s own motivation, aspirations, and goals to self-development, personality, need for achievement, self-efficacy and self-esteem.

Psychological theories and empirical findings from investigations into emotions, traits and environments will be introduced and non-parametric methodology will be explored.

Mind and Machine

The module aims to develop an understanding of a broad area of everyday functioning and experience in terms of the behaviours, feelings, attitudes and mental processes involved in that experience.

You will use functional analysis so that a broad experience can be broken down into a series of questions concerning the sub-functions, psychological states and behaviours involved, allowing the psychological constructs and theories that are associated with those states and behaviours to be elucidated and explored.

Exploration will involve appropriate methods to investigate what psychological constructs and theories relate to relevant behaviours and function.

Crime and Society: Justice and Reform

In this module, you will explore theories surrounding crime and its conceptual construction.

Alongside this, a consideration of the role and function of law in society will be made. You will undertake an introduction to criminal profiling, an exploration of what leads people to commit crime and will consider the relevance of class, culture, age, and gender.

Historical links to criminal behaviour, mental health, and sexuality will also be explored.

Cybercrime and Security

The module will introduce key issues related to cybercrime and cybersecurity. Some key areas that will be covered include stealing ideas in the digital domain, use of bots in cybercrime, digital evidence and themes and models of cybersecurity. Other issues, such as cyberbullying, trolling and hate speech, will also be explored.

Criminal Evidence

This module will introduce the legal, procedural, and evidential rules relating to criminal evidence from arrest to court. You will study a fictional case study to examine the different types of evidence, the admissibility of evidence, the use of evidence in court, and its probative value.

You will continue to develop legal reasoning, research and referencing skills.

Research Methods: Experimental Design and Analysis

The module aims to develop an understanding of experimental designs and associated methods of analysis related to psychology, and introduces you to research ethics. The introduced methods are variants of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), a method that allows comparison of groups and/or conditions.

Criminology Classics and Controversies

This module provides a comprehensive and critical knowledge of classic and contemporary criminological cases and the role of criminology in today’s understanding of different forms of crime. You will have the opportunity to compare and contrast as well as note the similarities in profiles of criminological cases.

Legal and Forensic Psychology

In this module, you will have the opportunity to explore a comprehensive range of key constructs, theories, and research in mental health and forensic psychology.

We will examine the numerous ways that psychological research, methods, and expertise are applied to both the study of psychopathology and to issues that come before the legal system.

Different types of criminal law will be discussed, and case studies will be used to consider how these might be dealt with.

Research Methods: Survey & Qualitative Designs and Analysis

The module aims to develop an understanding of survey and qualitative designs and associated methods of analysis related to psychology.

The module will develop knowledge of survey and qualitative approaches to investigating and analysing psychological data. The relationship between correlational analysis and predictive reasoning will be outlined. Areas covered include multivariate analysis (multiple regression) and thematic analysis.

Independent Project

The Independent Project provides an opportunity to apply appropriate knowledge, concepts, techniques and research methods of psychology to an in-depth study of a particular question or problem related to psychology.

This module aims to foster a greater understanding of the processes involved in undertaking a research project and marks the culmination of your learning experience.

The study will enable you to produce a written research report, and a poster presenting a summary of your research and findings.

Project Management and Presentation Skills

This module enables you to deliver a wide range of skills, from project management to presentation of results in an accessible form.

In this module, you will have the opportunity to develop your project management skills, to further develop your scientific reasoning and reporting skills, and to learn skills necessary for producing a poster presenting research work.

Cyberlaw

The aim of this module is for you to develop an understanding of a range of contemporary legal and regulatory issues relating to the internet, internet-related technologies, the web and various online ecosystems.

The module will consider discrete thematic, contemporary topics, all connected to the online cyber sphere.  Some of the topics are regulatory, others concern civil law, and some involve criminal offences.

It is a highly topical module and ever-changing, as human engagement with these online ecosystems is in a constant state of flux and development.

The module will examine domestic, comparative and international legal and regulatory responses, offering a contextual, critical perspective on the subject matter.

Professional Skills in Clinical Settings

Professional Skills in Clinical Settings aims to put theory into practice.  This module aims to introduce and explore important aspects in clinical settings and the role of the therapeutic relationship.

Interviewing skills in clinical settings will be explored in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of structured and semi-structured interview methods.  You will gain experience of participating in a recorded interviewing session in the role of interviewer.

In this module, you will participate in a supervised administration of a standardised intelligence test that will give experience of and insight into psychological assessment typically conducted by child psychologists, educational psychologists, clinical psychologists and occupational psychologists.

Criminology in Professional Practice

This module aims to introduce you to the practice of ‘real-life’ criminology.  It will equip you with an idea of where you could apply the skills learned in this degree.  This module will aim to introduce you to the professional areas of practice that your degree might take you into.

Young People and Crime

To establish a firm understanding of crime in relation to young people, the crimes that they commit, profiling and crimes that are committed against them.

This module aims to give you an understanding of the role of the youth justice system and explore what efforts are made to reduce recidivism and promote restorative justice.