Video Episode 8 - Dr Dee McGillicuddy on educational values, and making a difference...

Dr Dee McGillicuddy is a UCD Innovation Academy 2021 Fellow, recipient of UCD’s highest teaching award and has been nominated for a European teaching award for her Flourish Community initiative.

 “For me, education is the foundation upon which we build our society. It’s the cornerstone of what we are doing.  If we don’t have a strong education system with strong values to underpin what we’re doing, then we don’t understand who we are as a society, and we don’t understand who we are as human beings within the broader world as global citizens...”

“Nothing about us, without us” – giving space for the voice of any community to come forward.  We discuss “the spaces in between”.

Growing up in a school of 12 pupils and 4 teachers, and always wanting to be a teacher, helping out as early as primary and post-primary school.  How early inspirational teachers & mentors like Mr Keegan & Mr Murphy (he wasn’t afraid to let people take a risk) fed Dee’s fire for primary teaching – taking the scenic route through Arts and Geography, through an Hdip, Master’s and then a PhD.   

“Is this making a difference?” is Dee’s touchstone… The cracks in the system are not very far below the surface – raising the national consciousness around the impacts of poverty, deprivation and difference.  Even the physical size of children in disadvantaged vs more advantaged schools.  Researching the Traveller community and how marginalised, watched and surveilled they are. 

Concerns around the commodification & marketization of education – of education as a service, of the loss of relationship, active dynamic learning through meaningful interactions.  

Through Dee’s work with the UCD Innovation Academy, creating and promoting the Flourish community of practice for wellbeing and creativity in education – which has won UCD teaching awards and been nominated for European level awards.  “A tiny pebble dropped into the educational system – ripples down into people’s lives…”

 

Contact Dee

On Twitter (@deemcgillicuddy), on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deirdre-mcgillicuddy-4b9a91105/  or by email at deirdre.mcgillicuddy@ucd.ie 

 

Links

• Video of Dee presenting the Flourish community of practice for wellbeing and creativity in education - https://vimeo.com/463781936
• Twelve things Covid-19 has taught us about education and schooling – Irish Times article by Dee published June 30^th 2020 - https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/twelve-things-covid-19-has-taught-us-about-education-and-schooling-1.4285253
• The Children’s Rights Alliance - https://www.childrensrights.ie/
• Tribe mental health charity - https://www.tribecharity.com/
• National Council for Curriculum & Assessment - https://ncca.ie/en
• Marino Institute of Education - https://www.mie.ie/en/
• The Convention on the rights of the child - https://childrensrights.ie/childrens-rights-ireland/un-convention-rights-child
• Professor Laura Lundy - https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/laura-lundy
• Dr Shane Bergin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-bergin-2545315
• Brené Brown - https://brenebrown.com/
• The Teaching Council - https://www.teachingcouncil.ie/en/