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Health Professional Education PgCert

2025-26 (also available for 2024-25)

Start date

22 September 2025

12 January 2026

Duration

1 year part-time

Places available (subject to change)

20

About the course

Reasons to study

  1. Develop your career in health professional education through gaining a recognised teaching qualification accredited by the Advanced Higher Education with Fellowship (FHEA) status.
  2. Gain real-world experience through completing 180 hours of teaching practice hours.
  3. You will be taught by a team of passionate academics who have a wealth of skills, expertise and professional credibility. Keynote speakers will also contribute to the course in order to enhance your learning.

 

This course is aimed at all healthcare professionals wishing to gain a recognised teaching qualification. It explores teaching and learning theory and practice within a national and international context. This will enable you to develop your knowledge, skills and abilities related to evidence-based learning and teaching and assessment, which you will be able to apply within a range of academic and health professional settings.

  • You will be taught by a team of passionate academics who have a wealth of skills, expertise and professional credibility. Keynote speakers will also contribute to the course to enhance your learning.
  • You will be a taught in a stimulating and supportive learning environment that draws on expert knowledge, research and applied practice.
  • As part of the teaching hours requirement of the practice portfolio, you will have opportunities to develop and enhance integration of scholarship, research and professional activities in relation to teaching and supporting learning.
  • As part of the practice portfolio, you will be supported to reflect on and continue to develop your current and ongoing knowledge, skills and competence as an educator.

The practice portfolio provides a medium for recording your progress and creates an effective professional and personal portfolio whilst ensuring quality provision for learners under your supervision. It is linked to professional body requirements and helps you to achieve your individual career aspirations in relation to teaching and supporting learning.

Course detail

Learning and Teaching: Theories Processes and Strategies in HPE

In this module you will study theories related to learning, teaching and assessment applicable to health professional educators and teachers. You will explore major learning theories such as behaviourism, cognitivism and humanism amongst others, and will have the opportunity to apply a variety of teaching approaches within a peer group setting.

Assessment in Health Professional Education

This module aims to provide you with the opportunity to explore and develop your knowledge and understanding of current approaches to assessment. You will be supported to develop your role as a critical reflective practitioner and teacher in this area by undertaking and critically evaluating the purposes and methods of assessment. In addition, you will critically review and debate implications for education and training in relation to the developing academic, vocational and professional qualification structures.

Practice of Health Professional Education (Teaching Practice)

You will be provided with the opportunity to further develop your teaching skills in a variety of academic and practice settings. You will be required to complete and negotiate a teaching practice experience, providing the opportunity for you to explore the interface of theory and practice critically, thus enabling you to be involved in managing and critically evaluating teaching and learning approaches.

Entry requirements

Entry requirements for this course are:

Teaching route

  • Be a health care professional, with post qualifying experience that has extended your professional knowledge relevant to your field of practice.
  • Have an Honours degree (2:2 or above) or equivalent.

Postgraduate Study Fair


Come along to one of our Postgraduate Study Fairs to discover all your study options from short courses to PhD.

Our award-winning academic staff will be on hand to chat about all our postgraduate study and research options, flexible teaching and how postgraduate study can help you to advance your career or prepare for a career change.

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Placements


All students are required to complete 180 teaching practice hours. In order to achieve this you will be required to access teaching and learning opportunities in practice and Higher Education. This will be facilitated through negotiation and under supervision of an academic assessor.

Student support

At the University of Huddersfield, you'll find support networks and services to help you get ahead in your studies and social life. Whether you study at undergraduate or postgraduate level, you'll soon discover that you're never far away from our dedicated staff and resources to help you to navigate through your personal student journey. Find out more about all our support services.

Important information

Although we always try and ensure we deliver our courses as described, sometimes we may have to make changes for the following reasons

When you enrol as a student of the University, your study and time with us will be governed by our terms and conditions, Handbook of Regulations and associated policies. It is important that you familiarise yourself with these as you will be asked to agree to them when you join us as a student. You will find a guide to the key terms here, along with the Student Protection Plan.

Although we always try and ensure we deliver our courses as described, sometimes we may have to make changes for the following reasons

Changes to a course you have applied for but are not yet enrolled on

If we propose to make a major change to a course that you are holding an offer for, then we will tell you as soon as possible so that you can decide whether to withdraw your application prior to enrolment. We may occasionally have to withdraw a course you have applied for or combine your programme with another programme if we consider this reasonably necessary to ensure a good student experience, for example if there are not enough applicants. Where this is the case we will notify you as soon as reasonably possible and we will discuss with you other suitable courses we can transfer your application to. If you do not wish to transfer to another course with us, you may cancel your application and we will refund you any deposits or fees you have paid to us.

Changes to your course after you enrol as a student

Changes to option modules:

Where your course allows you to choose modules from a range of options, we will review these each year and change them to reflect the expertise of our staff, current trends in research and as a result of student feedback or demand for certain modules. We will always ensure that you have an equivalent range of options to that advertised for the course. We will let you know in good time the options available for you to choose for the following year.

Major changes:

We will only make major changes to non-optional modules on a course if it is necessary for us to do so and provided such changes are reasonable. A major change is a change that substantially changes the outcomes, or a significant part of your course, such as the nature of the award or a substantial change to module content, teaching days (part time provision), type of delivery or assessment of the core curriculum. For example, it may be necessary to make a major change to reflect changes in the law or the requirements of the University’s regulators or a commissioning or accrediting body. We may also make changes to improve the course in response to student, examiners’ or other course evaluators’ feedback or to ensure you are being taught current best practice. Major changes may also be necessary because of circumstances outside our reasonable control, such as a key member of staff leaving the University or being unable to teach, where they have a particular specialism that can’t be adequately covered by other members of staff; or due to damage or interruption to buildings, facilities or equipment, or pandemics.

Major changes would usually be made with effect from the next academic year, but may happen sooner in an emergency. We will notify you as soon as possible should we need to make a major change and will carry out suitable consultation. If you reasonably believe that the proposed change will cause you detriment or hardship we will, if appropriate, work with you to try to reduce the adverse effect on you or find an appropriate solution. Where an appropriate solution cannot be found and you contact us in writing before the change takes effect you can cancel your registration and withdraw from the University without liability to the University for future tuition fees. We will provide reasonable support to assist you with transferring to another university if you wish to do so.

In exceptional circumstances, we may, for reasons outside of our control, be forced to discontinue or suspend your course. Where this is the case, a formal exit strategy will be followed in accordance with the student protection plan.

The Office for Students (OfS) is the principal regulator for the University.

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