Internship Insights

Rethinking Learning: My Internship Experience at TCD's School of Education

Natalie Gildea, University of Notre Dame – Student Intern

Introduction

Despite prior experience in educational neuroscience, an internship in TCD’s School of Education transformed my perspectives on how and why students learn. As I engaged with researchers from a variety of disciplines working on the Critical ChangeLab project, I discovered the unique impact that community-centered education can have on students working towards brighter futures.

Key Insights and Impacts

This summer, I learned about the intersection of identity, community, and agency while working with the Critical ChangeLab civic education programme. This process required me to integrate perspectives from neuroscience, linguistics, and history. Ultimately, through collaborations with the accomplished School of Education staff, I developed best practices on how to enhance civic engagement among Irish youth.

A New Place for Education

When I arrived at the Long Room Hub one cloudy morning to start an internship in TCD’s School of Education, I thought I knew what to expect. During previous work experience in an educational psychology lab at the University of Notre Dame, I’d read countless papers on how to enhance student learning outcomes, and I’d worked with grade school students as an after-school tutor. So, the summer intern role in the School of Education immediately spoke to my deepest academic interests. Hoping to integrate my prior knowledge into an international context through TCD's Critical ChangeLab project, I applied for the position through Notre Dame’s Irish Internship Programme.

However, I ended up at a conference on the humanities and their role in climate education, unlike the strictly psychology-focused seminars I’d attended at Notre Dame. While hearing lectures from linguists, writers, artists, and musicians, I discovered that civic education would take different approaches from those I’d previously observed. Especially when teaching about developing issues like climate change, civic education demands input and observations from a variety of perspectives — not just a single set of learning standards. While I had been focused on traditional classrooms in the past, I began to understand the value of transformative learning processes where civic education is involved.

The theory of transformative learning, as I later learned, forms the basis of many of the experiential learning initiatives housed in TCD’s School of Education. First explained by Jack Mezirow in the 1990s, it involves the construction and reconstruction of meaning in a person’s life. In this model, truly transformative learning occurs when individuals inhabit new spaces and complete novel activities to then reflect on and evaluate their existing knowledge on a topic.

TCD’s Critical ChangeLab Project: Encouraging Brighter Futures

I immediately grew curious: how were students integrating prior knowledge with the new, creative experiences offered in Critical ChangeLabs? Psychologically, I knew that the extent of a person’s identity and roles within a community, shaped by historical narratives, influences how well they remember the past (Hacıbektaşoğlu et al., 2023). Additionally, a person’s memory and their ability to proactively think about the future are bound together neurologically, both involving the hippocampus (Conway, 2022). So, for people to effectively engage in transformative learning, what kinds of activities would stimulate their personal memories? Would these kinds of approaches help students think more proactively about civic action?

After reading through transcriptions of Critical ChangeLab focus groups and educator interviews, I discovered that students in these workshops had, in fact, drawn on collective community stories to spark creative plans for action. For example, students in one school expressed pessimism about their ability to make changes in their wider community. However, they all shared positive memories about diversity efforts launched within their school, and began to reevaluate those efforts considering other community spaces. After mapping out specific local areas that frustrated them, the students then formulated a plan to improve inclusivity in their town as a group. I was struck by how such a process transformed their perspectives on local infrastructure and geography, demonstrating that with stronger personal ties, people truly come to understand their roles as local actors more deeply. As one of their educators mentioned, the programme “didn't quite give [students] the awareness [of their community]” that they already had, “but gave them the language to describe it."

While traditional learning approaches tend to focus on bringing transformative learning relies on linking experiential knowledge to more flexible perceptions of how that knowledge can be used for action. When I discovered how impactful this approach was for Critical ChangeLab participants, I became inspired to bring that unique perspective to my future work in education.

Reflections on the Process

When I think about transformative learning overall, my thoughts go to the mentors, peers, and community I’ve had the pleasure of working with in the Science & Society Research Group at Trinity College Dublin. This summer, I feel as though I’ve reevaluated many of my preexisting ideas about education merely by hearing their perspectives. Their openness to feedback and interdisciplinary considerations inspired me to use similar approaches when I created resources for future civic education programmes like Critical ChangeLabs. As my mentors offered examples from other disciplines to add to the models, I tried to think creatively about what I could learn from them. Looking back, I engaged in the transformative learning process just as the students did in Critical ChangeLabs. Working with a determined team of experts at the School of Education, I helped to generate novel solutions to educational challenges, which will hopefully impact young people’s lives in the long run. 

As I begin my third year of undergraduate studies, my internship at the School of Education also helped me realize that research thrives in transdisciplinary environments. With the remainder of my studies at Notre Dame, I hope to participate in projects within more of these spaces than I previously had, seeing how much I’ve learned over a mere eight weeks at TCD. Also, I now feel more competent working with a range of methodologies and accepting feedback from those with a range of academic backgrounds. In the future, I aspire to mobilize these skills, putting the goals of civic education to work that I’ve come to understand this summer. Creating more inclusive learning communities for those around me can start just as the learning process does, with thoughtful reflection and re-evaluation.

References

1. Hacıbektaşoğlu, D., Tekcan, A. I., Bilge, R., and Boduroglu, A. 2023. The impact of group identity on the interaction between collective future thinking negativity: Evidence from a Turkish sample. Memory & Cognition, 51(3), 752–772. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01326-x.
2. Conway, M. Exploring the Links between Neuroscience and Foresight. Journal of Futures Studies, 26(4). https://jfsdigital.org/2022-2/vol-26-no-4-june-2022/exploring-the-links-between-neuroscience-and-foresight/.