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Location: Online via MS Teams
UL Staff / Students: Register your attendance
External Guests: Register your attendance
The Faculty of Education and Health Sciences is pleased to invite you to attend the third session of this academic year’s Knowledge with Impact public lectures on Thursday, 24 April. There will be two lectures delivered on the day:
- Éabha Hughes, PhD Researcher at School of Education: What's a Student Council?" - Initial Findings in Student-led Negotiated Curriculum for Democratic Education through the NEEDS Project
- Dr. Joanne O’Flaherty, School of Education: Ubuntu Voices: Exploring possible futures for Global Citizenship Education (GCE)
Please note these lectures will be recorded.
Lecture descriptions:
Éabha Hughes, PhD Researcher at School of Education: What's a Student Council?" - Initial Findings in Student-led Negotiated Curriculum for Democratic Education through the NEEDS Project
Education must play a critical role in strengthening democracy, fostering student voice, agency, and meaningful participation. NEEDS aims to respond to UNESCO’s call for a new social contract for education by enabling students to co-construct curriculum through the Negotiated Integrated Curriculum (NIC) process. This offers a practice-centred approach to embedding student voice in curriculum development, leveraging 100 hours of unhurried time within the Junior Cycle Short Course structure to support deep, sustained student-led inquiry. Using a dual socio-ecological and socio-cultural approach, NEEDS explores the affordances of NIC for Global Citizenship Education through democracy. This lecture will examine its implementation and emerging insights from NEEDS across four diverse post-primary schools. Initial findings suggest that despite efforts to substantiate Student Voice throughout Junior Cycle, it may still face the threat of tokenistic approaches within varied post-primary contexts. Preliminary analysis reveals differing understandings of agency and authentic voice between students and teachers.
Dr. Joanne O’Flaherty, School of Education: Ubuntu Voices: Exploring possible futures for Global Citizenship Education (GCE)
This Knowledge with Impact lecture, delivered as part of the Ubuntu Network’s work, highlights efforts to embed Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into post-primary Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Ireland. The Ubuntu Network engages with 15 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), 44 ITE programmes, and thousands of student teachers and educators. This lecture outlines four core areas: curriculum development, educator capacity building, research, and outreach. Key achievements include institutional partnerships, the creation of multimedia teaching exemplars, professional learning events, and collaborative research projects. Grounded in national and international education policies, the Ubuntu Network fosters communities of practice and promotes values such as equity, sustainability, and critical global awareness. Through strategic partnerships and advocacy, the Network works to influence policy and ensure that GCE/ESD becomes central to teacher education and broader educational reform in Ireland.