Our Approach

STAND’s global citizenship education approach is grounded in criticality and designed to respond to the speed, scale and interconnectedness of the 21st-century global challenges facing the current generation of third-level students, including environmental breakdown, widening inequalities, and ongoing war and conflict. It also seeks to address the increasing political polarisation that currently threatens democratic institutions and processes across the world; and responds to the growing influence of AI.

Within this complex and rapidly evolving global context, the development of transversal skills is essential for learners to critically engage, navigate uncertainty, and take informed action. At the same time, values such as sustainability, equality, justice and solidarity cannot be taken for granted; they must be actively cultivated.

Higher education has a crucial role to play in this regard. It is not only a site of knowledge production but also a space where values, critical thinking, and civic responsibility are developed. Embedding critical and transformative education approaches within higher education becomes increasingly important.

We work with stakeholders from across disciplines and departments across higher education institutions in Ireland to embed critical GCE, offering:

• accessible co-curricular and extracurricular programmes and events
• collaborating with institutions to integrate Global Citizenship Education into teaching and campus life and
• supporting students' unions and societies to lead on global issues. 

We are Irish Aid’s strategic partner working to embed GCE in the higher education sector, contributing to implementing their global citizenship education strategy. 

We currently work across 17 Irish campuses, collaborating for example with academic staff, ESD coordinators, student engagement teams, teaching and learning departments, senior leadership, student unions, student societies,  access programmes and university of sanctuary offices. 

Our Educational Approach 

In response to the ever-evolving global dynamics, STAND has developed an updated global citizenship education approach. In 2025, under the academic leadership of Dr Brighid Golden (Mary Immaculate College) and with funding from the Irish Research Council’s New Foundation scheme, STAND undertook a process of in-depth inquiry. This included professional development, collaborative framework development and stakeholder consultations with third-level students, educators and academics. The process led to an updated GCE approach, which informs STAND’s education work across all partnerships in higher education.

For us, Global Citizenship Education is an active, critical and transformative process. We use participatory, creative and dialogical methodologies to support our audiences to move beyond surface-level engagement with global issues and develop the capacities to understand, question and act.

We connect diverse groups of third level students in open and respectful learning environments to:

• Build knowledge on global justice issues - understanding the historical, economic, political and cultural forces that shape the world, exploring root causes and questions of power, and making connections between local and global contexts.
• Question dominant stories - recognising and challenging narratives that normalise injustice or unsustainability, examining diverse perspectives, and considering new and more hopeful ways of understanding the world.
• Cultivate emotional capacity - developing the emotional intelligence and resilience to engage constructively with difficult knowledge and differing perspectives, grounded in deep listening and reflective dialogue.
• Imagine better and take informed action - building confidence and a sense of agency to contribute to a more just, equitable and sustainable world, drawing on personal strengths and a commitment to collective action.