This mandatory entry level postgraduate diploma course provides students with an online generic and discipline-based training in research design and methodologies. It is a prerequisite course for students undertaking independent research at the postgraduate level in the humanities and social sciences and related discipline areas. The course delivers training in a range of generic transferable research skills, linking them to relevant research, pedagogical, epistemological and scholarship issues at the discipline level.

This is a common core course for all teacher education undergraduate programmes. The principal aim of this course is to establish a foundation by introducing students to a wider understanding of issues related to education, schooling and the society we live in. In the Pacific, education in the form of schooling has influenced the lives of people, thus the focus of the course is on issues that have a marked effect on society. As a common core course, ED153 Education and Society will be taken by all teacher trainees and is useful for those who intend to work in Pacific schools and educational contexts. The course provides the necessary background knowledge to understand the region and its peoples, their beliefs and traditions, and the way they learn in society.