The Centre has enhanced its commitment to research over the past year in line with the third aim of our Development Plan titled ‘Researching Practice’.  This states that the Centre should ‘provide opportunities for staf to conduct research which will inform the ongoing delivery of development education and support the Centre’s advocacy work’.  The research should also ‘illuminate the links between Ireland and the developing world’.  

In delivering upon this aim, the Centre has engaged in three research studies over the past year, two of which have been completed and one of which is ongoing.  These studies are described below.

 

 

In April 2008, the Centre in partnership with the Community Youth Work Team at the University of Ulster Jordanstown (UUJ), commissioned a practice-based research project with the aim of enhancing development education practice in youth work training.  

The research was carried out on our behalf by independent consultants Dare to Stretch and involved qualitative research into the global dimension in the BSc Honours in Community Youth Work at Jordanstown.  The research aimed to determine trainee youth workers’ knowledge of, and interest in, global youth work.  

The research process included the delivery of exemplar seminars on global youth work to demonstrate the efectiveness of development education methodologies in the delivery of youth 

work training. It also encompassed interviews and focus groups with academic staf and youth work students in the University of Ulster campuses at Jordanstown and Magee. 

 

Encouragingly, an overwhelming majority of research participants believed that ‘a global dimension should be incorporated into professional youth work training at the University of Ulster’.  

They considered a global dimension to be relevant to both youth work theory and practice so that youth workers can enable ‘young people to critique the wider world’.

The researchers produced a number of recommendations for strengthening the global dimension in youth work training and, indeed, making positive interventions in the wider youth work sector from a global youth work perspective.  The Centre for Global Education disseminated the research to key stakeholders in global youth work including youth organizations, development education practitioners, academics teaching global youth work and statutory organizations responsible for youth work policy and practice.  

We hope that these stakeholders will build on the report and help make its recommendations part of future youth work practice.

The Centre is indebted to Mark Hammond (Community Youth Work Team, University of Ulster Jordanstown) and Michele Taylor (YMCA Ireland) for supporting the compilation of the research.  Our thanks are also extended to Aine Wallace (Dare to Stretch) for compiling the research and the Department for International Development for funding this work.  

To access an electronic copy of the research report please visit: www.centreforglobaleducation.com/documents/105. 

 

 

 

The Centre undertook research in 2008 (later updated in 2009) to establish a baseline of information on courses and modules ofered at third level either on a stand alone basis or within the context of under-graduate and post-graduate courses in related disciplines.

The rationale for the research was based on our relationship with the tertiary education sector over the past twenty years in the form of resource provision, teaching and academic links with Schools that teach development studies.

We have been aware of the growing number of courses and academic pathways into development issues and the lack of any kind of directory to these courses in the north and south of Ireland.  With this in mind the Centre secured a grant from Trocaire ‘to enhance development education practice in the tertiary education sector through research that will strengthen collaboration and shared learning between development organizations and third level institutions’.  

The result of this research is Development Education in the Tertiary Sector, a reference guide containing information on courses and modules on development education and development issues.  This document is the most complete guide to development studies in the island of Ireland although we recognise that the tertiary sector is constantly changing in terms of new courses coming on stream, existing courses changing their content / structure, and new appointments in academia.  However, at the very least, the document provides a baseline from which we can conduct further studies in the future and ofers some guidance as to the expanding number of opportunities available to study development issues at tertiary level.

 

The Centre hopes that the document will promote discussion on development education in the tertiary sector and enourage further research initiatives at third level.  An electronic version of this document is available at http://www.centreforglobaleducation.com/documents/100.  

The Centre thanks Fiona Chan, a student intern, who compiled the research profled in this report.  Fiona was placed in the Centre by the Gibson Institute for Land, Food and Environment at Queen’s University.  An update of the guide was compiled by Sylvester Isang in March 2009.  Sylvester was also placed in the Centre by the Gibson Institute.

 

 

In April 2009, the Centre received funding from DFID to commission and manage a research-based project that aims to investigate and analyse our increasingly diverse society through a series of case studies.  The case studies will present biographical profles of individuals that refect the increasing diversity of our society arising from inward migration.  The case studies will focus on three specifc groups: 

frst generation migrants; second generation migrants; and refugees.  The frst generation migrants will be sub-divided between economic migrants and those who are students and / or 

family members.  Refugees will include asylum-seekers who have made claims for refugee status.

The research aims to identify some of the challenges confronted by individuals who have come to live in Northern Ireland from other societies in Europe and the global South.  While individual case studies can not refect the life experiences of an entire community or 

ethnic group living in Northern Ireland they can collectively provide us with an informative and insightful perspective on life for migrants in our society.  

The research aims to support awareness raising of international development issues through discussion of the factors in the developing world that lead people to migrate to countries in the global North.  It may also promote the many positive contributions made by migrant communities to our local economy, society and cultural diversity.  To that extent, the outcomes of the research can support education initiatives that work toward intercultural 

learning in our formal education sector and wider society.  The Centre  intends disseminating the research fndings through our networks in the development, voluntary, third level education, minority ethnic and migrant sectors through publications, academic journals, electronic media and appropriate web sites.

This research project is part of an increasing engagement by the Centre for Global Education with minority ethnic and migrant communities in Northern Ireland.  In September 2008, the Centre began a new three year project designed to build capacity in development education in the minority ethnic sector (see section 5 of this report).  This project has strengthened the Centre’s working links with minority ethnic sectors and this research project will augment that relationship.  The research will be completed and disseminated in May 2010.

 

 

 

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