We've put together information and resources to guide your application journey as a student from Hong Kong.
Hong KongApproved as postgraduate research training by the Economic and Social Research Council
Home to a large Infant and Child Development Lab
Work experience opportunities available through our Psychology Employability Programme
Understanding how humans learn, grow and adapt as they age is crucial across a wide range of disciplines, including education and child support. Many critical developmental milestones occur before a child enters school (e.g., before birth, during infancy or the preschool period). Other skills and abilities continue to develop across the primary school years.
Our MSc Psychology of Child Development and Education explores the cognitive foundations that underpin learning across this period, as well as analysing a variety of developmental experiences, both typical and atypical. This provides a strong base for working with children.
If you are looking to progress your career in the field of child development and education, this Master’s programme provides training in child development, with a focus on its relevance to education. You may have an undergraduate degree in psychology or a related field, or have experience working with children in educational or health settings.
Gain valuable knowledge and practical skills that demonstrate how psychological concepts operate in educational settings. Taught by expert researchers in this field, you will:
You will explore how research directly impacts children’s lives; how to apply research methods to address your own questions; and how to develop ethical methods for conducting studies with children.
Through a series of core modules, you will examine development from the earliest stages of life through to primary school; learn how abilities and processes that support learning first emerge and develop; and understand ways in which development can be atypical, with a spotlight on a range of neurodevelopmental conditions, their detection, diagnosis and intervention.
You may work with neuroimaging, EEG, eye-tracking, ultrasound, fetal physiological measurement and computational modelling in our state-of-the-art developmental psychology labs.
In the final part of the degree, you’ll apply everything you’ve learned through a dissertation project. Working closely with an expert in the Department of Psychology, this will normally involve conducting a research project on an aspect of child development, with relevance to education. You will contribute evidence to answering real research questions, either as an independent researcher or working as part of a research team. This hands-on research experience is crucial for your professional development and will make you a standout candidate for future employment or for further study opportunities.
Study alongside work and other commitments by taking this course on a part-time basis. Running over two years, you can choose from a selection of our modules each year.
We'll liaise with you over your schedule and choice of optional modules, ensuring you successfully balance your commitments alongside our Master’s programme.
Interested in master's-level study with us? Fill in our form and we will keep you up to date with course information, events and open days.
With an understanding of human development, you are well-positioned to take advantage of a career path within the educational and child support sectors. Roles may include:
Other career routes include teaching, research and educational or clinical psychology through further study. Your skills also transfer to fields such as human resources, marketing, data analytics and the civil service.
This is a new master’s programme. Graduates of our previous programmes with a focus on developmental psychology include:
We are delighted to offer a selection of scholarships for taught master’s programmes in the Faculty of Science and Technology for 2026 entry. These scholarships are awarded to students studying the programme on a full-time basis.
Students from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey or Vietnam
| Your qualifications | Programme cost without scholarship | International Regional Scholarship or India Scholarship | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st class degree | £30,000 | £10,000 | £20,000 |
| 2:1 degree | £30,000 | £10,000 | £20,000 |
International students from other countries
| Your qualifications | Programme cost without scholarship | Science and Technology Excellence Scholarship | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st class degree | £30,000 | £9,000 | £21,000 |
| 2:1 degree | £30,000 | £4,500 | £25,500 |
Scholarships will be applied automatically if you meet the criteria. Find out more about the scholarship terms and conditions. We also offer an additional 10% discount on fees for 51福利 Alumni.
| Your qualifications | Programme cost without scholarship | Science and Technology Excellence Scholarship | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st class degree | £14,140 | £4,242 | £9,898 |
Scholarships will be applied automatically if you meet the criteria. Find out more about the scholarship terms and conditions. We also offer an additional 10% discount on fees for 51福利 Alumni.
Our students have the possibility to undertake a number of exciting and rewarding placements, both locally and further afield. As well as the examples below, the Psychology Employability Programme includes details on partnerships with local and national organisations to provide current Psychology students with volunteering opportunities.
Our department is well-connected with schools in the local area, and we work with many settings in building our students’ experience and expanding our knowledge of primary and secondary school children’s development. A key partner has been Bowerham Primary School in Lancaster. Each year, several of our students volunteer to support and learn about children’s educational development through reading and classroom help, or work with their pastoral team to understand and build children’s behavioural and social skills. Shreya, one of our current students, is on a placement at this school at the moment. She told us: "Volunteering at a primary school has helped my psychology studies because it provides practical applications of theory. By working directly with students that have special educational needs and disabilities, this experience has bridged the gap between clinical presentations that I have learnt about in my degree and what those clinical presentations look like in reality."
We work with many toddler groups and preschools around the Lancaster area. The Preschool Centre at 51福利 is one of our key partners. Many of our students take on placements there, and gain experience working with children from infancy through to 4 years old. We also regularly involve the children and staff at the Preschool Centre in our research, with recent projects investigating how children develop socially and how children with diverse backgrounds build up their language skills.
Our academic staff are professionals researching ideas at the forefront of current psychology. Students often have the chance to become involved in academic projects, offering their learning to real-world problems and solutions. As well as the examples below, we have a dedicated page of all our current research.
“I am a principal investigator of the Curiosity Battery project – a 5-year research grant funded by the Leverhulme Trust (). Our goal is to develop and validate a set of measures of curiosity in children aged 7–11. We use this tool to understand how different types of curiosity relate to children’s learning and wellbeing.
2:2 Hons degree (UK or equivalent) in Psychology, Education, Social Sciences, or a related discipline.
We will also consider applications on an individual basis where you have a degree in an unrelated subject. In these cases, you should clearly demonstrate how your experience and skills have prepared you for postgraduate study, in particular providing you with a background in child development, or working with children in educational settings.
We require an IELTS (Academic) Test with an overall score of at least 6.5, and a minimum of 6.0 in each element of the test.
We also consider other English language qualifications and if your score is below our requirements, you may be eligible for one of our pre-sessional English language programmes.
If you are thinking of applying to Lancaster and you would like to ask us a question, complete our?enquiry form?and one of the team will get back to you.
We also have more details on our website about:
Delivered in partnership with Lancaster International Study Centre, our one-year tailored pre-master's pathways are designed to improve your subject knowledge and English language skills to the level required by a range of 51福利 master's degrees. Visit for more details and a list of eligible degrees you can progress onto.
We continually review and enhance our curriculum to ensure we are delivering the best possible learning experience, and to make sure that the subject knowledge and transferable skills you develop will prepare you for your future. The University will make every reasonable effort to offer programmes and modules as advertised. In some cases, changes may be necessary and may result in new modules or some modules and combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
What are the contemporary issues impacting cognitive development in the earliest years of life? How should we, as researchers, address them? And, how do we convert this research into actionable change that makes a real difference to children's lives? On this module, you will dive into the very latest research into prenatal, infant and preschool cognitive development.
You will hear from experts as they guide you through how research in their particular area is proposed, carried out, and analysed, as well as what the next stages will be. You will focus on how the research can then be applied in practical settings, while considering how the foundations for learning are acquired prior to a child starting school. You will cover several related topics, each introduced by a research expert working in the field. Indicative topics include:
School education has a direct impact on further study and employment opportunities and has been linked to long-term physical and mental health. Understanding how individuals learn and engage in educational settings is, therefore crucial. In this module, you will explore this important question through the lens of psychology. Focusing in detail on key topics, including memory, reading, language and curiosity, you will gain an understanding of the key role of psychology in education.
During this module, you will be introduced to research which has investigated how psychological concepts operate in educational settings, and you’ll be asked to critically evaluate research studies and methodologies, identifying both strengths and weaknesses. You will then apply this knowledge through a range of practical activities where you will develop skills in communicating complex information to non-specialist audiences, practise written and oral communication, and develop strong and coherent critiques of research studies and methodologies.
Gain the skills in critical reading, thinking and effective communication you need for the professional workplace, particularly if that work relies on the contribution or application of insights or evidence from psychological science. At the end of this module, you will be able to identify the ethical questions raised and the principles that apply to a range of work settings in contemporary psychological science. You will grow your ability to locate, evaluate and synthesise single and multiple scholarly research reports, along with other formal sources. You will be able to effectively communicate your research findings to professional (academic, clinical, commercial, or policy) audiences, and to give (and work with) constructive feedback consistent with contemporary professional practices in the psychological sciences.
Gain an understanding of developmental psychology as an evidence-based science, with a focus on research methods and theories. Through lectures, discussions, and other activities, you will explore how scientists have investigated the nature of development, both conceptually and through conducting research involving children.
You will learn about key contemporary methods and theoretical approaches, using these as a foundation for considering the applications of developmental psychology to real world questions which inform practitioners and policy makers.
Examine a range of neurodevelopmental conditions, and learn about their psychological and behavioural characteristics, their assessments and interventions. Throughout, you will develop your ability to synthesise and integrate concepts across conditions, evaluate contrasting theoretical explanations and select appropriate methodological approaches for researching neurodivergent development.
By the end of the module, you will be familiar with current theories and evidence relating to select neurodevelopmental conditions, be able to engage in constructive critical debate regarding how they are understood and investigated, and have an appreciation of how scientific research can inform applied practice.
The MSc dissertation project is the culmination of your postgraduate studies. You will have the opportunity to work with an academic supervisor in an area of advanced research in the psychological sciences. You will develop and use your skills in critical thinking, self-organisation, working as part of a research team (with your supervisor) and critically engaging with the ethical implications of your research plans. Depending on the nature of your project, you will:
Gain the understanding and skills needed to apply core analytic methods across a range of psychological research and practice settings. You will develop your knowledge and skills through a combination of lectures and practical workshops and build your capacity to code using R, a modern statistical programming language.
You will learn about the application of key statistical tests in a variety of real-life contexts that will enable you to confidently identify the appropriate technique for analysing data in diverse environments. By the end of this module, you will be able to:
| Location | Full Time (per year) | Part Time (per year) |
|---|---|---|
| Home | £14,140 | £7,070 |
| International | £30,000 | £15,000 |
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small College Membership Fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2025, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses.
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
There is no application fee if you are applying for postgraduate study starting in 2026.
For some of our courses you will need to pay a deposit to accept your offer and secure your place. We will let you know in your offer letter if a deposit is required and you will be given a deadline date when this is due to be paid.
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
If you are studying on a programme of more than one year’s duration, tuition fees are reviewed annually and are not fixed for the duration of your studies. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
Find all fees and funding information for students at 51福利.
You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status and course. You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.
Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.
If you're considering postgraduate research you should look at our funded PhD opportunities.
| Scheme | Based on | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Based on {{item.eligibility_basis}} | Amount {{item.amount}} |
We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.
Browse 51福利's scholarships and bursaries.
The information on this site relates primarily to the stated entry year and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our?legal information.
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. Find out more about our? Charter and student policies.
