How to get involved!

UCC Staff:  Become a Praxis Advocate for Critical Global Citizenship and Development Education – see details below.

Others:  If you are a not for profit group or organisation, public body, research or academic institution anywhere in Ireland and around the world, and would like to form collaborative partnerships with UCC staff or students, we would like to hear from you.  We will provide more detail below in due course.

UCC Staff: How to become involved.

The Praxis Project is a relatively new project in UCC which aims to instil an understanding and a culture of critical global citizenship and development education (GCDE) pedagogy, practice and research across the university. The project is housed at the Centre for Global Development, UCC.   Many of you are already strongly engaged with GCDE although may not name it in this way, others I know would like to explore these approaches in your work.

You can read more about the Praxis Project and about the value of GCDE (including Human Development, Human Rights, Pedagogical and Global, National and UCC Policy Contexts) by going to our new website www.praxisucc.ie and particularly to our strategic plan:

http://praxisucc.ie/about/strategic-plan/

We are looking for advocates and pioneers from all disciplines or indeed any aspect of work at UCC (academic, management, administrative, research, cleaning, security, technical, grounds work, maintenance, etc.).   You can find more detailed information below and for further information please contact me at gertrude.cotter@ucc.ie.

GCDE is not necessarily (although it can be) about adding new content to your teaching or research, but it enriches the concepts and contents of all subjects and fields of education related to global social, political, economic and environmental justice issues, by widening their dimensions.

Definition of Development Education

Having reviewed a wide range of DE definitions Colm Regan (Daly, Tony, Regan, Ciara and Regan, Colm, 2015: 1) (Daly, Tony, Regan, Ciara and Regan, Colm, 2015) describes DE as follows:

  • Focuses directly on key development and human rights issues locally and internationally;
  • Seeks to stimulate, inform and raise awareness of issues from a justice and/or rights perspective;
  • Routinely links local and global issues;
  • Explores key dimensions such as individual and public dispositions and values; ideas and understandings, capabilities and skills;
  • Critically engages with the causes and effects of poverty and injustice;
  • Encourages public enquiry, discussion, debate and judgement of key issues;
  • Encourages, supports and informs action-orientated activities and reflection in support of greater justice;
  • Takes significant account of educational theory and practice;
  • Emphasises critical thinking and self-directed action;
  • Seeks to promote experiential learning and participative methodologies;
  • Routinely challenges assumptions by engaging with multiple, diverse and contested perspectives.

We are looking for advocates and pioneers from all disciplines or indeed any aspect of work at UCC.  We want firstly to map what we already do as a university, because we do a great deal collectively, in this field.  We then want to look at how we might strategically integrate a culture of GCDE across the work of the university.  UCC is and can be even more so, a leading university in this field and serve as a flagship for the conscious integration of GCDE in higher education in Ireland, Europe and Globally.

To pilot this part of our work we would like to work with the following groups of UCC staff:

  1. Any discipline, academic department, or indeed UCC School or College which is willing to strategically engage with this process.
  2. Senior management.
  3. Individual staff who would like to explore what these ideas, concepts and approaches to pedagogy mean in their work, how you already integrate them and how you might further integrate such approaches, into their curriculum, practice, research or activities.

What is involved?

Firstly, this is a collaborative process and will involve working deeply, authentically, perhaps even slowly (imagine!), realistically, creatively and in a spirit of a community of practice.  You are invited to:

  • Attend six two-hour workshops with a cross-disciplinary group of staff, with a view to understanding GCDE approaches to pedagogy, research and practice. These will inevitably have to be online in 2021.  These will start in February and time and date will be agreed with participants;
  • Work together, using a participatory action research approach, to explore how each participant might integrate GCDE into their work. We will also discuss the value and possibilities of cross-disciplinary approaches.  This process will result in the development of a series of case studies which will be curated on the Praxis website, which will be distributed widely in academic and GCDE sectors, and which will contribute to a ‘living’ GCDE  in Higher Education report which will be updated each year;
  • Some staff may work together as a group. This is particularly the case if an entire department or discipline is working together on this project;
  • For those who wish to do so we will work with the GCDE sector and with local and global South community and academic partners, particularly in relation to areas of joint actions in real-world settings;
  • For those who wish to do so participants will co-write a peer-reviewed article for an academic journal.

For an example of work done through the Id Est Project (Introducing Development Education to Student Teachers, UCC), you might take a look at:

QUALITY REVIEW NOVEMBER 2020 CASE STUDY PUBLIC LEARNING PROJECTS AS INNOVATIVE, RESEARCH-BASED CLASS ACCOMPLISHMENTS written by Dr. Stephen O’Brien, School of Education and Seánín Hoy, PME Student and myself in 2020:

https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/support/qualityenhancementunit/goodpractice/IdEstGoodPracticeCaseStudyFINALSoE2020.pdf

How to Apply

Please send the following details to Dr. Gertrude Cotter

gertrude.cotter@ucc.ie

Name:

Position/Department:

Academic Discipline (if relevant):

A brief description of work you currently do in this field.

A brief description of what you would like to achieve or why you would like to be involved in this project.

This project is funded by Irish Aid.  This is how Irish Aid defines Development Education

Development education is a lifelong educational process which aims to increase public awareness and understanding of the rapidly changing, interdependent and unequal world in which we live. By challenging stereotypes and encouraging independent thinking, development education helps people to critically explore how global justice issues interlink with their everyday lives. Informed and engaged citizens are best placed to address complex social, economic and environmental issues linked to development. Development education empowers people to analyse, reflect on and challenge at a local and global level, the root causes and consequences of global hunger, poverty, injustice, inequality and climate change; presenting multiple perspectives on global justice issues.

Irish Aid (2017: 6).