Sport and Exercise Psychology MSc
1 Year Full-Time | September Start

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.
• Discussing ethical issues in research, and analysing results.
• Describing bias and limitations of research.

On this module you will be prepared to work in the growing field of health promotion. The module focuses upon initiating behaviour change in relation to health behaviours in general and physical activity in particular. The module explores both the impact of exercise on mental health and the underpinning psychological variables that shape people’s decision-making in relation to exercise participation. The module is devised to provide you with a thorough theoretical grounding as well as giving opportunity to develop your practitioner and employability skills. You will learn about the effects of exercise on mental health as well as theories of behaviour change, and how to devise and implement tailored strategies to support exercise promotion across different populations. You will explore and develop your own working practice and will learn how to be become a reflective practitioner. This module will enable you to develop your communicating and influencing skills, to engage in decision making and creative problem solving, to work collaboratively, to gain self-awareness, to help develop others and to adhere to professional standards.

The production of skilled movement is a central feature of human behaviour and is of paramount importance in sport and exercise settings. In this module you will learn how movement is developed, learned and controlled in order to produce the complex patterns necessary for skilled behaviour. By considering a broad range of topics from child development through to expert modelling, you will be able to apply the principles to your own experiences of motor learning, and design practices that will address movement issues and maximise performance. Key topics within the module include:
- Human Information Processing
- Dynamical System Theory
- Attention, anticipation and decision-making
- Motor learning and the learning process
- Designing practice to enhance learning
The practical application of theoretical knowledge is a central tenet to the module and therefore, in addition to critically evaluating the research evidence from multiple theoretical perspectives, you will be required to contextualise the material in relation to current practices in sport and exercise domains.

On this module you will explore a range of issues relating to contemporary professional practice in sport psychology. You will learn how to be an evidence-based practitioner. You will understand how to apply appropriate ethical principles and guidelines to sport psychology practice and will be introduced to the theory behind current intervention techniques and professional decisions. You will learn how to assess and classify an athlete, and how to design bespoke mental training programmes for athletes for the purpose of performance enhancement. You will also learn about performance dysfunction, performance impairment and performance termination issues, and when to refer athletes to other allied professionals. You will have the opportunity to try out selected mental training techniques yourself and will learn how to teach them to athletes. You will explore and develop your own personal professional philosophy for sport psychology practice, and will develop your skills as a reflective practitioner.

This module brings together theory, research and practice from the literature of counselling and interpersonal processes in the context of sport and exercise. You will gain knowledge of, evaluate and debate the underlying principles of the most widely used counselling perspectives (focussing on psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive behavioural approaches) and reflect on their rationale for proposing distinctive ways of working with clients in the sport and exercise domain. These perspectives will be contextualised through typical challenging interpersonal processes such as life events, belief systems, cohesion and venue effects. You will reflect critically on cognitive processes, including self-aggrandizement, unrealistic optimism, illusion of control and counterfactual thinking, and theorise on the means by which counsellors should attempt to deal with these. This module meets criteria set by the British Psychological Society for the core areas of cognitive processes, psychological skills and strategies and social processes, as well as professional skills with regard to ethics and practice, thus enhancing your graduate attributes for further qualifications and employability.

The module is designed to give you a theoretical and practical knowledge of common and more advanced quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting and analysing data in psychology. A range of methods will be studied, and relevant hardware and software will be used in exercises. The communication of findings according to the most recent conventions and with due regard to the audience will be addressed. The approach is to provide a theoretical background for each technique, so that you are not simply capable of carrying out and reporting analyses, but also capable of reflecting critically on their appropriateness in psychological research and practice.

This module is designed to provide you with a range of professional skills important for your academic and professional development in Health, and Sport & Exercise Psychology. It will assist with preparation for your thesis as you learn about advanced bibliographic skills, project proposals, and research management, ethical and legal issues. You will learn employment-related skills, media skills, and personal and career development skills such as presentation and communication as well as C.V. enhancement. You will also make practical applications of skills using online resources and employ self-reflective approaches to recording and enhancing awareness of your professional development in Health, and Sport & Exercise Psychology.

In this module, you will be able to independently conceptualise, plan and undertake a novel piece of research that contributes to psychological knowledge and understanding. You will critically evaluate current theories and evidence to generate your own research question. You will use the relevant ethical guidelines to design a feasible project plan. You will develop your independent research skills during this module and identify points of collaboration with supervisors, research staff and other potential stakeholders. You will use a variety of relevant skills, techniques, and research methods to implement your study and finally, you will have the opportunity to disseminate your findings in written form.