We are happy to inform our audience that June has been a productive month for the OTTERs: our project has made an appearance to many events! The first one? The Ubuntu Network Dialogue Day on 13 June, joined by our very own Deirdre O'Neill of the University of Limerick who conducted a presentation about OTTER!
The Ubuntu Network is a community of educators in Ireland involved in post primary Initial Teacher Education. Its Dialogue Day is an annual event where educators from higher education, NGOs, etc. gather to network and exchange ideas and good practices to promote Global Citizenship Education (GCE). This year's focus was Exploring pedagogical practices to integrate Global Citizenship Education (GCE) into initial Teacher Education, with special attention paid to value orientation. Storytelling, visual arts, digital games were used in the six workshops of the event, which provided a medium for participants to reflct on global development issues. The Dialogue Day, as the name suggests, also included three dialogue sessions.
We were thrilled to share with our audience some of the lessons we've learned related to sustainability education! We kickstarted the session with an introduction to Education Outside the Classroom (EOC) and how it benefits students. Then, we provided an overview of the OTTER methodology, with some key practices that were revelead through a literature review. But any theory is empty without practical examples - which is why we continued with our school case studies, that highlighted the experiences of the teachers we cooperated with and how they felt and related to EOC as a pedagogical approach. Last but not least, participants were asked to take a few moments to themselves and reflect on how they could incorporate EOC into their own practices.
Overall, it was an exciting day where we had to opportunity to engage in rich dialogues with our peers, make connections and learn about other innovative projects and initiatives on global citizenship education, and understood even more that we each play a part in creating positive change in our world - and this is also what we're aiming to achieve with OTTER.
