This article was co-written by David Nyaluke, ESD Officer at UCC (at the Centre for the Integration of Research in Teaching and Learning); and Nina Sachau, Executive Director at STAND (Irish Aid’s Strategic Partner for embedding GCE in higher education).
Why this Matters now
The challenges facing our world today are unprecedented in scale and complexity. Environmental breakdown, widening inequality, and ongoing wars and conflicts are interconnected crises that reinforce each other. At the same time, we are witnessing the rise of nationalist populism and increasing political polarisation that threatens the foundations of our democratic institutions and multilateral cooperation. These developments risk stalling or even dismantling hard-won progress on social justice and environmental sustainability.
The speed, scale and interconnectedness of these challenges highlight that the values of sustainability, equality, justice and solidarity cannot be taken for granted; they must be actively cultivated through education and collective action.
Within this context, higher education has a crucial role to play. Universities are not only sites of knowledge production but also spaces where values, critical thinking and civic responsibility are shaped. Increasingly, the third-level students we work with report feelings of anxiety, apathy, frustration and despair in relation to global crises, while also expressing a strong desire for an education that equips them to respond meaningfully. They expect higher education to be more than preparation for the labour market; they want learning experiences that help them understand complex global challenges and empower them to, collectively, contribute to positive societal change.
This expectation is captured in the words of a student from STAND’s Student Advisory Panel: “The ultimate purpose of higher education, in my view, is to develop informed, confident and socially responsible individuals – not just employable graduates. It should expand critical thinking, personal growth, resilience, and the ability to navigate complexity […] Graduates should be prepared to contribute to society, not just compete in the labour market.”
Critical transformative education: GCE and ESD
Embedding critical and transformative approaches to education within Irish higher education becomes therefore increasingly important. Approaches such as Global Citizenship Education (GCE) or Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) offer important frameworks for supporting students to critically engage with global challenges, and develop the knowledge, values and skills needed to contribute to more sustainable, just and equitable futures.
The Dublin Declaration on Global Education to 2050 (GENE, 2022) and some academics and practitioners in the sector are using Critical Global Education (GE) as an umbrella term for values-based approaches such as Global Citizenship Education (GCE), Anti Racism Education, Intercultural Education, Human Rights Education and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).
They define Global Education as ‘education that enables people to reflect critically on the world and their place in it; to open their eyes, hearts and minds to the reality of the world at local and global level. It empowers people to understand, imagine, hope and act to bring about a world of social and climate justice, peace, solidarity, equity and equality, planetary sustainability, and international understanding. It involves respect for human rights and diversity, inclusion, and a decent life for all, now and into the future.” (GENE Declaration, 2022)
Irish Aid’s Global Citizenship Education Strategy (2021-2025) positions GCE as a critical component of Ireland’s response to global inequality, climate change, and sustainable development. Higher education institutions are recognised as key actors in advancing this agenda through teaching, research, and engagement.
Under SDG 4.7. GCE and ESD are described as key educational responses to global challenges and explicitly described as interlinked in their shared commitment to justice, sustainability, and responsible global engagement. The National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development in Ireland also highlights strong commonalities between GCE and ESD in terms of values, competences and learning approaches.
Both GCE and ESD place emphasis not only on knowledge acquisition but also skills and competencies that transform and make learners agents of change. They both advocate a Head-Heart-Hand approach that aims for learners to acquire the critical and system thinking necessary to be able to address problems from their root causes (head), have empathy and values (heart) and be active citizens that act collectively for a better world (hand).
Complementary – but distinct: GCE and ESD
While complementary, GCE and ESD have different normative entry points and histories.
GCE foregrounds justice, power, colonial histories and inequality with a particular attention to supporting learners to unpack the root causes, complexity and interconnectedness of the major challenges of our world, including climate change, war and conflict, economic inequalities, racism, gender inequality and poverty. Global Citizenship Education has been significantly influenced by critical pedagogies (in particular by Paulo Freire) which see education as political and transformative, not neutral or simply technical, and which value deep understanding and participatory, experiential learning approaches.
ESD started off as primarily focusing on environmental issues and often foregrounded protection of the environment and sustainable economies (Stockholm Convention 1972). However, in the past 20 years, since the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), ESD has taken a more holistic approach encompassing justice, fairness and power. The 2021 UNESCO definition explicitly mentions a ‘just society’ and ‘cultural diversity’, and emphasises the competencies and behavioural and systemic changes required to live within safe planetary and socio-economic boundaries for current and future generations.
It is important to recognise that neither GCE nor ESD are single unified approaches. Both fields contain a diversity of perspectives, pedagogical practices and theoretical traditions.
For GCE this is often described along a ‘soft-critical’ continuum (first introduced by academic and educator Vanessa Andreotti). At one end of this continuum are approaches that emphasise awareness raising about global issues, individual behaviour change and charitable solutions to global inequality. At the other end of the continuum are critical and transformative approaches, which examine the deeper historical, political, and economic causes of global inequality, including power relations and injustice. These approaches encourage learners to question dominant narratives, their own role in global systems, and foster capacities to navigate uncertainty, imagine alternative futures and take collective action towards systemic change.
Similarly, ESD can be described on this soft-critical continuum, with soft approaches focusing mostly on individualized solutions to sustainability emphasising individual lifestyle changes such as recycling, energy conservation, and responsible consumption. While critical and transformative ESD approaches encourage educators and learners to question the economic systems, power structures, and patterns of production and consumption that contribute to environmental degradation and social inequality, aiming for local and global systemic changes toward just and sustainable futures. This ESD calls for educators to reimagine their teaching to create graduates who are agents of social, economic and ecological transformation, and for learning environments that are examples of change.
Embedding transformative education in the curriculum
Cultivating graduates that can contribute meaningfully to equality, justice and sustainability requires structural and cultural integration of critical transformative education within higher education. It requires commitment and institutional coherence across curriculum design, pedagogy, research, community engagement and institutional strategies.
Many higher education institutions in Ireland are already engaging with GCE and ESD as part of their commitment to advancing justice and sustainability at both local and global levels. They are at varying stages of this journey, focusing on diverse priorities shaped by their local contexts, as well as national and international initiatives and opportunities.
The new National Open Course on ‘Embedding GCE into Higher Education’ is a space for reflection and professional learning. It provides the opportunity to engage with critical Global Citizenship Education approaches, and supports higher education staff to embed these into their own teaching, research, student engagement approaches, and wider institutional structures and policies.
The badge complements two existing Open Courses on ‘Education for Sustainability’, and ‘Embedding the SDGs across the Curriculum’, creating a suite of professional development opportunities for further and higher education staff who are interested in integrating transformative learning in higher education.
This online course is being delivered by GCE practitioners Dr Eilish Dillon (Maynooth University), Dr Brighid Golden (Mary Immaculate College), Dr Gertrude Cotter (University College Cork), Dr David Nyaluke (University College Cork), Charlotte Bishop (STAND) and Caitriona Rogerson (STAND), with support of Dr Alison Farrell, Dr Aisling Flynn and Dr Lisa O’Regan of the Teaching and Learning Department at Maynooth University. It is being made available through the National Forum for Teaching & Learning’s Open Courses platform.
The live online course begins on Thursday 16th April, and enrollment is now open. Find out more and register on the OpenCourses.ie website here: https://opencourses.ie/opencourse/embedding-global-citizenship-education-gce-into-higher-education/
More reading:
For a historical background and an overview of the current context we highly recommend reading: Dillion E, et al (2024) Global Education in Ireland: Critical Histories and Future Directions, London Bloomsbury.
About this article authors
This article was co-written by David Nyaluke, ESD Officer at UCC (at the Centre for the Integration of Research in Teaching and Learning); and Nina Sachau, Executive Director at STAND (Irish Aid’s Strategic Partner for embedding GCE in higher education). We sincerely thank Dr. Mark Kelly (Head of ATU Centre for Sustainability) and the GCE Digital Badge development team for their review and feedback.
