‘Re-imagining Development Education.’
3rd Annual Development Education Conference, Centre for Global Education
The Centre for Global Education organised a well attended conference entitled ‘Reimagining Development Education’ on Wednesday 9th April 2008 at St Mary’s
University College in Belfast.
The conference was organised with the aims of assessing the current state of
development education and investigating new approaches to its practice, including the
Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry methodology, internet and media techniques,
business methods, cross-border networking, strategic campaigning partnerships and
how to understand, work with, and mutually benefit from other adjectival education
sectors. The conference sought to identify and expunge expired perceptions of
development education and promote visible and effective methods of engagement
with the formal, non formal and informal sectors.
The opening session was chaired by Mr Patsy Toland of Self Help Development
Ireland and Chair of the Irish Development Education Association (IDEA), who
introduced the two speakers for this part of the conference.
The first speaker for the day was Permanent Secretary Will Haire of the Department
of Education in Northern Ireland. Mr Haire discussed the growing importance of
development education in a rapidly changing world and pointed to the increased
opportunities for increased opportunities to introduce this due to curriculum changes
in Northern Ireland.
The key note speaker, Dr Balwant Singh, Regional Director of Save the Children in
South and Central Asia was then introduced. Dr Singh has over 20 years of
experience in international development and health, including work directing large
country and multi-country programmes, strategic planning and organisation
development.
Dr Singh’s extensive experience as a development practitioner around the globe gives
him a unique perspective on the development education sector and its impacts here
and abroad. Dr Singh based his talk around the following key areas; disasters,
growth, inequality and opportunity. By placing these in a development education
context he highlighted the importance of awareness and understanding of global
development challenges, and the role that development education plays in this
understanding.
The remainder of the conference was comprised of various workshops (each
participant attended two workshops). The workshops offered were as follows:
development education and campaigning; development education and the open spaces
for dialogue and enquiry (OSDE) methodology; development education and new
technology; development education, regional working groups and IDEA; development
education and adjectival educations.
The conference ended with a plenary session where participants had a chance to
feedback and comment on the day’s proceedings.
The conference was extremely well organised and was well attended by a variety of
people involved in the development education sector, thus ensuring interesting
conversations and discussions with input from different viewpoints and backgrounds.
The variety of workshops ensured that there was something of interest to everyone,
with topics having been carefully decided upon to best complement the aims and title
of the conference.
Re-imagining development education was organised by the Centre for Global
Education as part of a Capacity Building in Development Education project, funded
by Irish Aid. The project also supports the organisation of two training seminars per
annum and the production of a journal, Policy and Practice: A Development
Education Review.