News Collective Intelligence: An Innovative Research Approach to Promoting Ocean Literacies in Ireland

Sea Change is a European Horizon 2020 project aiming to establish a fundamental “Sea Change” in the way European citizens view their relationship with the sea, by empowering them, as Ocean Literate citizens, to take direct and sustainable action towards a healthy ocean, healthy communities and ultimately a healthy planet.  One aspect of the project involves hosting education conversations across eight European countries to identify the barriers to teaching 12-19 year olds about the ocean.

Collective Intelligence (CI), a systems-thinking methodology, is playing a pivotal role in collecting and visualising the barriers impeding ocean literate societies whilst assisting in the design of solutions and options for the successful integration of oceans into education and outreach curricula. 

On Thursday 19th May,  Dr. Christine Domegan, Dr. Patricia McHugh (Marketing Discipline, J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, NUI Galway) and Dr Veronica McCauley, Dr. Kevin Davison, School of Education, NUI Galway, co-facilitated Ireland’s contribution to the Ocean Literacy campaign by gathering together key marine stakeholders from across Ireland to discuss and debate the challenges and solutions towards more ocean literature citizens in Ireland.  The primary target group for this research is children from second level education.