MSc Sport and Exercise Psychology

Content

The course is made up of the following six compulsory modules:

• Contemporary Issues in Sport Psychology - Develop a broader understanding of contemporary issues in sport psychology. These incorporate the social, developmental and clinical psychological components affecting athletes throughout their lives, and across all levels of sport competition. 
• Psychological Skills - An introduction to the body of empirical work that investigates; cognitive processes and skill acquisition in sport, how individual differences may play a role in skill acquisition and execution of sport skills and how mental skills training can be used to enhance the performance of teams and individuals.
• Conducting and Evaluating Psychological Research - Develop an understanding of research methods and data analysis in psychology. We aim to equip you with research literacy, whereby you are able not only to design and conduct psychological research appropriately, depending on the research question, but are also capable of critically evaluating published psychological research.
• Professional Practice in Sport Psychology - An introduction to the lifecycle of the delivery of sport psychology support to target populations such as individual athletes, teams of athletes, parents of athletes and coaching staff. It will include key topics such as philosophical assumptions underpinning sport psychology service delivery and the ethics of psychological support. The module is designed to provide students with a detailed understanding of "how" to deliver sport psychology services from intake, needs analysis, case formulation, planning, delivery, monitoring and evaluating. 
• Exercise Psychology - An introduction to the investigation of exercise and physical activity. You'll study key themes including current recommendations for physical activity, the relationship between physical activity and mental health, and the role of motivation.
• Dissertation - To achieve the MSc award you will complete an in-depth research project, supervised by specialist subject tutors.

This structure is for the full-time course delivery only. For part-time delivery, the same modules will be studied. However, the structure will differ.

Full time students will study all modules over the course of 12 months. Part time students will study modules one to three in Year one and four to six in Year two.

The University continually enhances our offer by responding to feedback from our students and other stakeholders, ensuring the curriculum is kept up to date and our graduates are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need for the real world. This may result in changes to the course. If changes to your course are approved we will inform you.

Learning and Teaching

The course is delivered via a blended learning approach, incorporating asynchronous weekly lectures that students can engage with in their own time through our excellent virtual learning environment Blackboard. This is supplemented by three-day blocks of face to face teaching on campus every six weeks (two blocks in semester one and two blocks in semester two).

This innovative teaching and learning approach suits full-time and part-time study and means you can study in the most flexible and convenient way, around your professional and personal commitments.

For more details see our full glossary of learning and teaching terms.

Study time

Many of the modules that make up this course are useful for practitioners already working in the field of sport and exercise. You can even study modules independently as part of a personalised Continuous Professional Development programme.

Assessment

The innovative assessment methods for this course have been designed to help you develop the skills necessary to practice as a sport and exercise psychologist. These include case studies, reflections, psycho-educational workshops, role plays and empirical research.

For more detail see our full glossary of assessment terms.