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Mairead, the ‘few strong boys’ comment you mention other staff using affected something deep inside me there! I actively encourage the girls and boys I teach to carry out the same tasks around the school and am quick to react to some staff when these gender stereotypes are attempted to be reinforced. I remind the girls (and the staff!) they are ‘strong, independent women’ and can do physically challenging tasks. I try to model gender equality myself, taking on tasks some of the male staff would generally gravitate towards. One of the best things we have started in the school is hire a local boxing coach. He is great for putting all the (similarly sized) boys and girls together to do their training and even spar with each other. This, and regular discussions of the success of Irish female boxers, challenges the stereotypes around boys are sporty and girls are brainy.
The students in my class are aged 14-16, and we have discussed gender stereotypes before when engaging with StandUp Awareness Week (against LGBTQ+ Bullying). When asked to discuss gender stereotypes they all had strong convictions on what they perceived to be equality between the sexes in Ireland. Due to their maturity, they all believed (with a typical teenage smugness) that girls could do anything boys could do and didn’t buy into the idea of gender stereotypes when it came to children in Irish society. Interestingly these stereotypes did not change when we discussed becoming parents one day: Dads should have equal involvement in child-rearing as the Mams. The male students really surprised me, and I was proud of this generation for their openness to equality when it came to raising the next generation. However, I think they would all be shocked to learn of the level of gender inequality outside of Ireland: access to education, training, employment, and social status.
I would involve Maths topics on statistics and graphs to explore global gender inequality. To assess prior knowledge, I would use DevelopmentEducation.ie 10 Myths About Womens Rights Quiz. From here, students could do independent or paired research to find current statistics on different regions, classes and sectors where gender inequality exists. They could create graphical displays using the statistics they gather, and offer written or verbal feedback using the head, heart, hands approach: what have you learned, how does it make you feel, what are you going to do about it?
A shared drive with resources is a great idea Fiona. As teachers we all have different styles and methods, and allowing teachers to go through the resources themselves and choose what is most age and stage appropriate for their class is an inclusive way of bringing development education and global citizenship in our classrooms. For example, I really liked the DevelopmentEducation.ie resources, as they break it down into Educator Roles or Resource type based on topic, format, SDG, country/region of focus and by intended audience. I would include a list of these resources in a Word document on our shared drive in the school to signpost teachers to the wealth of resources available. This would hopefully give my colleagues confidence in teaching these topics without feeling like they need to re-invent the wheel or come up with their own activities and lesson plans.
Development education is important to share the interconnectedness of humanity and the environment, and encourage young people to become cognisant of ‘the global village that we all have a stake in’ (Ehigie, 2021). Teaching global citizenship then encourages ways of how we can better our world, both locally and globally through our social and civic responsibilities.
Ehigie (2021) touches on the correlation between underprivileged communities and anti-immigrant, racialised rhetoric. In my school setting I see the difficulties social and economic disadvantage places on our students and their families. One of the reasons I wanted to do this course was to learn how to get students in our school interested in the wider world. To date this has proven difficult as they struggle to be concerned of others outside of their communities when they themselves are trying to survive within their own difficulties of poverty, social justice, and agency.
Taking learnings from this first module, I think I need to approach teaching development education from the Irish Aid’s focus ‘reach the furthest behind first’. Our students (aged 10-16 in a school for students with SEMH difficulties) have a strong sense of fairness. I think appealing to this sense could be a strong pathway in to generating empathy and action. I would offer my students statistics, show them videos, and facilitate group discussions about how underdeveloped (unsure if this is the correct language?) some parts of the world are in terms of education, clean water and sanitation. I would encourage the students to compare themselves to people of a similar age in the Global South in line with some of the SDGs. For most, this sense of fairness could transform into a call for justice and may encourage them to take action.
