Investigating education for development: a case study on the implementation of the "Treasures of Acahualinca" project (2013–2014)
IP: María Mar Rodríguez Romero
Other people on the research team: Araceli Serantes Pazos, Dolores Cotelo Guerra, José Luis Iglesias Salvado, Apolinar Graña Varela, María José Caride Delgado, Ana Lampón Gude
Collaborating organisation: Solidarity International of Galicia
Funding body: Galician Cooperation (General Directorate for External Relations and the European Union of the Government of Galicia)
Amount of funding: €24,287.00
The overall objective was to investigate the Global Citizenship Education projects carried out by SIG and to generate knowledge transferable to practice that would make it possible to improve the organisation and transfer the findings.
The research was organised into two parts:
In the first part, a diachronic study was carried out of the Global Citizenship Education projects implemented by SIG between 2002 and 2012 (11 projects in total). Through a comparative analysis of the projects, we developed timelines and other graphical representations showing the organisation’s behaviour over this period in relation to aspects such as: themes, objectives and project duration, beneficiaries and funding. In this way, we studied the organisation’s evolutionary process, its trends and challenges.
In the second part of the research, a case study was carried out on the “The Treasure of Acahualinca” project, which was implemented by SIG between August 2012 and June 2013 in 13 secondary schools in Galicia. Through semi-structured interviews with teaching staff and student groups from the 13 participating centres, and via 3 micro-case studies, evidence was generated on how the Acahualinca’s Treasure project links with the curriculum, its significance for the students, and its influence on their learning of issues related to Global Citizenship.
Regarding the findings from the comparative analysis of the ECG projects implemented by the NGO, we were able to observe some trends, such as the retention of beneficiaries, the varying levels of complexity of the objectives depending on the themes addressed in the projects, and the existence of three main themes that recur over time: interculturality, the Millennium Development Goals and fair trade. It can also be observed how the duration of their interventions has been increased and the number of centres they work with reduced, opting for deeper and more incisive interventions rather than extensive and divulgative ones. Furthermore, a refinement of their pedagogical and didactic approaches is observed, moving towards interventions in line with the more sophisticated perspectives of Global Citizenship Education and committed to global citizenship.
Among the findings of the second part of the research, the following should be mentioned:
The project develops in each centre as a situated practice and not as a mere methodological device, which gives rise to idiosyncratic processes that have their own characteristics in each centre, with each teacher and for each group of students. This specificity is reflected in the three micro-case studies, which show how there is a specific imprint on the development of the process for each centre: consistency (centre 1), reflective capacity (centre 2) and support for the process (centre 3).
The subjects involved in the ED projects are preferably Ethics and Citizenship Education, and in one case, Religious Education. Their content is directly related to the students’ democratic and human rights education. These are subjects with a very limited weekly timetable, which makes it difficult to maintain continuity in the interventions and limits their depth.
The students who participated in the case study project verbally and behaviourally express, through the production of the videos, their preference for participatory, experiential and creative methodologies such as those put into practice by the Acahualinca Treasury. However, these types of strategies are more linked to learning processes and skills and less to content and, furthermore, they require a more participatory effort from students, to which they are not accustomed, which demands extra support and dedication from the teaching staff. Time is one of the main constraints for the project’s development. The scarcity of hours dedicated to the related subjects makes appropriate implementation difficult. The contributions of the micro-case studies show how the Acahualinca Treasure training project, as a situated practice, has idiosyncratic characteristics related to the teachers’ link with the NGO, the teachers’ pedagogical style, and the organisational and curricular conditions of the centres and subjects to which it is linked. It shows how there is a more or less intense struggle to fit the project into the curricular and organisational dynamics of the subjects in the schools. This battle is resolved differently by each teacher and, undoubtedly, requires favourable conditions at an organisational level, for example, the timetable, and availability for the teacher to do extra work supporting the students. For their part, they must be willing to get involved outside school hours and have the ability to reach an agreement and work collaboratively. Both of these requirements are challenging and are met productively when the teacher supports the work process beyond the school framework. In summary, four fundamental ideas are recognised that underpin the biographical accounts of the two technicians from Solidariedade Internacional Galicia: commitment, creativity, each individual’s trajectory or background (shaped by personal experience and experience within the institution), and experience with the project itself.