DE Skills Identified by DE Facilitators

Facilitators were not asked specifically about the skills associated with DE. Findings in relation to this dimension of DE emerged from questions about interviewees’ understandings of DE and what’s involved. It is clear, though, that different skills are important to many of those involved in this research. Among those interviewed, 14 specifically identify skills as important in relation to DE. Of those, eight are involved in formal education.

Siobhán explains that “it’s a kind of a skills thing for me ... I would see a lot of overlap between what they [NCCA] talk about as key skills and what we talk about as the skills that you need for, you know, in terms of DE or citizenship education”. Bríd explains that, for her, “we probably agree with the skills, you know that critical thinking, I think, is crucial. The capacity to listen to others’ views even when you are vehemently opposed or pro an issue then to listen to others’ views, you try to find the argument in there that makes sense, that you’re open and willing to consider changing your view, that you’re informed, that you’re basing your decisions not on your gut instinct but on evidence or practice, so those skills I think are probably similar across the board”.

Making local-global Connections

A key area of skills highlighted by facilitators is making connections, with an emphasis on ‘local-global’ connections, identified by 15 of those interviewed. Why it is considered important is understood differently. Most frequent reference is to local-global connections because development issues are seen as having local-global dimensions. This is followed by an understanding of local issues as important in themselves. Both of these positions are understood here as reflecting a critical discourse as they are focused on interconnectivity and they challenge North-South thinking.

Talk of local-global connectivity can’t be assumed to reflect a critical discursive position and seven facilitators draw, at least partly, on a North-South discourse. Regarding ‘the local’ as an ‘entry point’

for issues or action at a global level is mentioned 19 times among seven interviewees. Robert, for example, suggests that the links between the local and the global are important and, for him, they are framed within the context of using local examples from Ireland and around the world to throw light on the experience of people in the global South:

“because you’re mobilising the Irish public to support our work overseas and you cannot do that if there’s a disconnect ... If we’re to have any, you know, meaningful change over the long term, then we need to properly educate, not just our young people, but everybody clearly on the issues and if we’re going to explore rights and responsibilities around these different social justice issues then it must be grounded in what’s recognisable to them which is the Irish experience first of all then it’s overseas after that”.

Patrick typifies talk about the global South evident in a similar way to two others:

“I mean the scale like in terms of human suffering, the scale in sub-Saharan Africa is so much worse. The poverty, the sickness, the quality of life, the child mortality. All of that is so much worse at that level and it would be wrong, I think, for us to forget that and we can’t solve that simply by dealing with issues at home all the time. At some stage we do have to say, ‘this is important because it’s actually happening now’. We have to deal with it now and try and improve it now”.

A key skill in making local-global connections, for seven of the facilitators interviewed, is understanding the effects of how people live in the global North on the global South. For Dónal,

“the problem is the rich of the world. We all know this. This is not rocket science. So, DE is about investing in all our futures. It’s about getting people who have the most culpability about the state of the world to recognise their role, their culpability, their measure of appropriate response and recognising the kinds of obligations and duties that being a European or being Irish or white or being male or being an academic woman who’s in university places on us in the top 5 per cent of the world’s population”.

Niamh applies two understandings of local-global connections. On the one hand she suggests that the local acts as a way in to understanding the global whereas on the other she argues that local-global connections make much more sense in the context of shifting global realities and that they offer a much more complex set of analytical skills in relation to them:

“in an increasingly globalised world it makes sense not to look at issues in isolation, so for example, if you were looking at issues around land ownership or poverty that you’d also look at homelessness in an Irish context or looking at migration you’d also look at asylum as an issue and direct provision in Ireland or human rights issues or gender issues that you’d also look at stuff in an Irish context. ‘Cause I think that that helps challenge a sort of an ethnocentric approach that people have ... and ‘if we can just get them to a point where they’re like us, then everything will be alright’, whereas if they actually interrogate their own position or stuff that’s happening in our own context ... it will start the process where they may be able to kind of start to develop a little bit of empathy”.

Only two facilitators indicate the need to focus on local-global interconnections because of the need to shift problematic North-South development relationships. As this would challenge existing discourses and power relationships, this position, albeit a very marginal one articulated by those interviewed, is suggestive of a ‘post-critical’ discourse.

Despite the prevalence of talk of connections between the local and the global, four interviewees are critical of the types of local-global connections made or not through DE with two in the formal sector critical of a local-only focus, one working for an international NGO who is critical of ‘localism’ and a lack of a global focus in some DE, and one facilitator critical of the superficiality of local connections.

Understandings of the global are similarly complex, though for most people (15) issues of justice,

poverty and inequality are global and understood in the context of a ‘global world’ or globalisation, rather than simply in North-South terms. In general, references to ‘the global’ are prevalent in all sectors, even though such references are confined among those in the community education sector to references to globalisation, the ‘global South’ and global solidarity or community. Among the sectors represented in interviews, references to ‘the global South’ are most prevalent among those working in DE organisations by comparison to the formal sector and international NGOs. The term ‘Third World’, also suggestive of a ‘North-South’ discourse, is popular among four of those interviewed, most of whom talk about debating the use of the term in DE contexts. Depending on how this is understood, therefore, it could reflect both a North-South and/or a post-critical discursive formation.

In general, though there are different understandings of local-global connections, the lines seem to be drawn between those who regard the global as referring to ‘the global South’ with an emphasis on the local as an ‘entry point’ for this ‘wider’ focus, and those who are more focused on ‘the global’,

‘global-local connections’ or the ‘globalness’ of local issues in Ireland in the context of globalisation.

As evident here, while some understandings of local-global connections challenge constructions of North-South understandings based on paternalistic development relationships, this is not always the case, with some of the language of local-global based on North-South assumptions.

Critical Thinking Skills

As critical thinking is discussed above with reference to knowledge processes, this section focuses briefly on the use of terms associated with critical thinking, reflection and analysis skills.

Facilitators tend towards the language of challenge rather than criticality in relation to critical thinking and analytical skills. The term ‘challenge’, though rather vague, cannot be associated with a specific discourse. When it is used in terms of individual mindset change, it may reflect a liberal discourse and when it is used in relation to structures of injustice it may reflect a critical discourse. Of the terms associated with a critical discursive formation, ‘critique’ and ‘critical thinking’ are mentioned most often, with very few specific references to other ‘critical’ or post-critical terms such as ‘critical analysis’, ‘critical reflection’ or ‘praxis’. There are no striking differences in terms of the numbers of references to critical thinking and analytical skills’ terms used among those working in formal or other DE contexts. For Catherine, critical thinking and collaboration skills go hand in hand: “the key skills for me and probably it sounds really from a schools’ perspective, critical thinking, analysis and cooperative learning and I think that last one is often neglected”.

Collaboration Skills

Collaboration skills are talked about to some extent (14) within the context of discussions about skills and DE, with the greater emphasis, across all collaboration skills mentioned, among those working in formal education. Many of the collaborative skills mentioned reflect the types of learning processes associated with participatory, experiential and action-based learning. Facilitators talk about democratic engagement, dialogue, participation and confidence-building. Paul talks about these skills in terms of the “process of how one acquires knowledge and thought processes that go on, you know, has to be done in a way that enables true dialogue, participation of a kind with other learners, and I suppose an ability to reflect upon what we’re learning in all those bases”. For Fiona, “what I hope they get from it is understanding, analysis, knowledge but also an experience of the possibility of dialogue, the possibility of collaboration, the benefits of collaboration. That, I think, can be quite transformative and a sense of agency within themselves, a sense of actually ‘I can do something, we can do something’. Where that goes after that, you know, who knows? I don’t prescribe, you know”. Overall, though important for some, there are still relatively few references to collaboration skills among the facilitators interviewed for this research, with very few references to terms such as empowerment, compromise or listening skills.