Dr Brighid Golden—Lecturer in Global Citizenship Education at Mary Immaculate College (MIC) has been awarded funding under Research Ireland’s New Foundations programme for her project ‘Get Critical: Expanding and adapting a conceptual framework for critical global learning for use in new contexts’.
The project will examine how the existing framework—originally developed by Dr Golden—can be adapted for use in new educational contexts, with a particular focus on providing a practical resource for educators and development practitioners. The funding of close to €10,000 will enhance its aim to encourage the inclusion of critical thinking in global citizenship education, enabling learners to respond thoughtfully and effectively to global challenges.
The New Foundations scheme supports researchers to collaborate with community and voluntary organisations, policymakers and other civil society groups to bring research to real-world application. Dr Golden’s project builds on her existing work in global citizenship education and will see her collaborate with STAND—an Irish non-profit organisation dedicated to engaging third-level students in Ireland and beyond to take action for global justice, equality and sustainability.
Speaking about the award, Dr Brighid Golden said: “I am delighted to receive this funding from Research Ireland. The project called Get Critical is a progression from my previous research in which I developed a conceptual framework for critical thinking development within global citizenship education.
This funded project is a collaboration with Irish NGO STAND in which I will be supporting their team to adapt this framework for their own unique context. I am very excited to be able to collaborate with them and share with others how established frameworks can be adapted with the aim of encouraging others to embed critical thinking development into their practice.”
Brighid is also the creator and host of the Curious and Critical GCE podcast, where she looks at how global citizenship education and critical thinking connect. Produced by the DICE (Development & Intercultural Education) Project, the podcast was developed to accompany the book Global Citizenship Education: Curious Teachers, Critical Classrooms, edited by Dr Golden. The podcast invites educators, researchers and practitioners to reflect on their approaches to teaching and learning, and features conversations on practical strategies, real-world challenges and what it means to foster critical global engagement.
You can listen to Curious and Critical GCE by clicking here.
