UNESCO have warned that democracy is backsliding, calling for a new social contract for education to reinvigorate democracies and strengthen student voice (UNESCO, 2022). These concerns are reflected in the Framework for Junior Cycle and, while existing literature recognises the potential to revolutionize education, no framework translating this theory into practice exists (UNESCO, 2022). This vital framework is developed by NEEDS. Negotiated Integrated Curriculum (NIC) enables personal and social integration by developing curriculum around students’ personal and global concerns (Fitzpatrick, 2016), creating a context-sensitive framework that empowers students as co-constructors of curriculum, explicitly placing student voice at the centre. This builds on NIC work previously conducted in Ireland (Fitzpatrick et al., 2018) and is underpinned by a conceptualisation of the relationship between student voice, engagement and agency (O’Reilly and O’Grady, 2024). NEEDS adopts a social constructivist methodology through dual methodological approaches to engage in an empirical, evidence-based study of the affordances of NIC for Global Citizenship Education (GCE). NEEDS represents a qualitative case study methodology of 4 post-primary schools. A socio-ecological approach (Taguma and Barrera, 2019) establishes conditions for sustained participant engagement with the research, while a socio-cultural approach leverages 100 hours of unhurried time for the NIC process as a Junior Cycle Short Course. The context-sensitive NEEDS framework aims to act as an evidence-based demonstration initiative of education through democracy to redesign curriculum with the future-proofed capacity to evolve, responding to UNESCO’s call. Methods include observations, field notes, artefacts, surveys and teacher (n=8) and student (n=25) focus-groups, complemented by close-to-practice research with teachers through practitioner inquiry to reflectively capture incidental learning. Toolkits tracking developments in student Voice and Participation, Self-Direction and Wellbeing will provide insight into participant Agency and changes in beliefs. Interpretive approaches to qualitative analysis will develop codes through a recursive process across datasets to achieve theoretical saturation, creating a series of insight-rich case studies. Initial findings suggest that despite efforts to substantiate Student Voice throughout Junior Cycle, it may still face the threat of tokenistic approaches within varied post-primary contexts. Preliminary analysis suggests that both students and teachers have different understandings of agency and what it means to have an authentic voice in one’s education.

Fitzpatrick, J., O’Grady, E., & O’Reilly, J. (2018). Promoting student agentic engagement through curriculum: exploring the Negotiated Integrated Curriculum initiative. Irish Educational Studies, 37(4), 453–473. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1512882 O’Reilly, J., & O’Grady, E. (2024). ‘Our opinions really matter’: conceptualising and operationalising authentic student voice through negotiated integrated curriculum. Education 3-13, 52(6), 811–829. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2024.2331954 UNESCO (2021) Reimagining our Futures together: A New Social Contract for Education (UNESCO, 2021)