1. Letting the light in: Re-presenting education in a turbulent age
Representing education: Development education meets critical pedagogy

2. Letting the light in…. Biography matters… Development education
Possibilities and challenges
Sites and Spaces
Primary Education
Initial Teacher Education
A question of purpose?
Letting the light in….

3. Development Education
“An educational process aimed at increasing awareness and understanding of the rapidly changing, interdependent and unequal world in which we live. It seeks to engage people in analysis, reflection and action for local and global citizenship and participation. It is about supporting people in understanding, and in acting to transform the social, cultural, political and economic structures which affect their lives and others at personal, community, national and international levels.” (Irish Aid, 2006, 12).

4. Development Education….
Is concerned with global inequalities between and within countries/polities
Confronts issues of power, responsibility and culpability
Questions taken-for-granted systems, concepts, knowledge, especially those that privilege the powerful
Examines the political and historical, as well as the social, environmental and economic dimensions of global issues such as poverty, climate change and conflict
Is characterised by participative and dialogical methodologies that support reflexivity
Sees knowledge as plural, dynamic and constructed
Recognises multiple perspectives and multiple futures
Recognises that education is never neutral
Is directed towards actions to create a more just, equal and sustainable world

5. Development Education
‘Curricular global turn’ (Mannion et al., 2011)
Mainstream response to globalisation
Depoliticised, rooted in local agenda, economically driven
Primacy of economic and cultural over political (Bryan, 2010)
Co-option onto state’s neo-liberal agenda
De-clawing (Bryan, 2011)
Faustian bargain (Selby and Kagawa, 2011)

6. Primary Spaces Views of knowledge Towards critical thinking
Knowledge as socially constructed, dynamic, open-ended and multiple
Move away from concept of the ‘right’ answer
Towards critical thinking
‘Higher order’ thinking
Asking questions / posing problems / finding alternative answers

7. Primary Spaces Doing History
Historical knowledge as constructed, interpretative and subject to change
Multiple perspectives
No single narrative
Acknowledging perspective
Seeing the world differently
Changing the question
Children as historians
Thinking historically about the world

8. Primary Spaces Children as non-adults Children as social agents
Children as competent social actors, present citizens and rights holders
Participation and voice
Engaged in social construction of world and word
Multiple childhoods and voices
Structures
That promote participation
That empower children to make meaningful decisions
That work to optimal level with emergent capacities on complex ideas
Children as incompetent, immature, future citizens
Primacy of protection and welfare
Emphasis on responsibilities and social conformity
Developing from immaturity to maturity in linear progression
Structures
Where adults hold power
That promote control and surveillance
That favour didactic approaches to teaching and learning

9. Children’s Global Thinking
Another thing I noticed was the amount, of not prejudice, but the stereotypes that are already present in their minds, like at this age (Teacher, Junior Infants)
In Africa, nobody can get no food, they have no sheep, no cows…we have to help the people in Africa (Helen, Junior Infants)

10. Children’s Global Thinking
Critical literacy:
Sees reader as active rather than passive
Acknowledges that texts are not neutral
Engages with children’s social realities
Analyses language/text to ask questions about power
Creates space for children to reflect, pose questions, propose theories

11. Children’s Global Thinking
Critical literacy
Identifies multiple voices and positionality
Identifies omissions and silences
Promotes reader’s reflexivity through awareness of own perspectives, experiences, values
(Comber, 2001; O’Brien, 2001; McLaughlin and DeVoogd, 2001; Damico, 2012; Green, 2001; Freebody and Luke, 1990)

12. Children’s Global Thinking
Alex: He had to walk ten miles to get a shower. Researcher: What makes you say that? Alex: Because he lives in Africa and they have to walk ten miles to get water. Researcher: Where did you hear that they have to walk ten miles in Africa? Alex: On an ad. Researcher: Where? Alex: On telly.
Jack: I rubbed it out because I put Africa in. Researcher: And what do you think? Jack: It’s not Africa. Researcher: Why? Jack: Africans don’t have homes. Phillip: Because in Africa they’re black and they kind of have no food and they have no water. You know like we have food and water”

13. Children’s Global Thinking
“But in Africa they don’t smile, only when they have like money and lots of food and all that, and when they get all that stuff they won’t be sad, they’ll be smiling and when they get people’s help.”
Researcher: Okay but who decided to put the shower there? Who decided to make that the shower? Adam: I think that, probably builders over there, or Ireland wants to help them. Researcher: Okay. Adam: Ireland probably helped them or other countries. Researcher: Why do you say that? Adam: Because they are very short of bricks.

14. Re-presenting education in a primary context – DE as Education
Children as social actors living in the world
Knowledge as open-ended, dynamic and plural
Approaches to learning that are participative
Multiple perspectives and listening to other voices
Engaging with controversial issues and troublesome knowledge
So what’s the problem?

15. Teacher Education Spaces
Apprenticeship of observation
Reflection, critical reflection
Performativity
From individual to systemic change
The curriculum as planned, enacted and experienced (Marsh and Willis, 2007)
Back to first principles
A sense of purpose

16. Bryan, A. (2011). Another cog in the anti-politics machine
Bryan, A. (2011). Another cog in the anti-politics machine? The ‘de-clawing’ of development education, Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 12(1), Bryan A. (2010). Corporate multiculturalism, diversity management, and positive interculturalism in Irish schools and society. Irish Educational Studies, 29(3), 253–269. Comber, B. (2001). Critical literacy: Power and pleasure with language in the early years. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 24(3), Damico, J. S. (2012). Reading with and against a risky story: How a young reader helps enrich our understanding of critical literacy. Critical literacy: theories and practices, 6(1), Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). ‘Literacies’ Programs: Debates and Demands. Prospect: Australian Journal of TESOL, 5(7), Green, P. (2001). Critical literacy revisited. In H. Fehring & P. Green, (Eds.), Critical literacy: A collection of articles from the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (pp. 7-13). Newark, Delaware: International Reading Association. Irish Aid (2006). Irish Aid and Development Education. Irish Aid, Department of Foreign Affairs: Dublin. Downloaded from development-education.pdf McLaughlin, M., & DeVoogd, G. (2004). Critical literacy as comprehension: Expanding reader response. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(1), Mannion, G., Biesta, G., Priestley, M., & Ross, H. (2011). The global dimension in education and education for global citizenship: Genealogy and critique. Globalisation, Societies and Education 9(3-4), Marsh, C.J., & Willis, G. (2007). Curriculum: Alternative approaches, ongoing issues (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. O’Brien, J. (2001). Children reading critically: A local history. In B. Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms (pp ). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Selby, D., & Kagawa, F. (2011). Development education and education for sustainable development: Are they striking a Faustian bargain? Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 12(1),