DEC is run by an elected mangement committee of stakeholders, representative national bodies and professionals. DEC is responsible for the continuous professional development, running and implementation of several Department of Education (DE)/ Ministry of Education (MOE), support services in disadvantaged areas (DEIS schools), Primary language curriculum, Inclusion, Literacy, STEM, Maths, Creative Arts, National teacher induction programmes (NIPT) and Junior Cycle (Second Level) curriculum research and development. Moreover DEC is leading best practice in the Centre for School Leadership, Research to Empower Educational Leaders (REEL), and ‘Choose Safety’ as a national education, Health and Safety authority Strategy for second level students and schools. DEC has the capacity to reach all schools, both at primary and post-primary level through these national, DE and MOE, Government services and programmes. DEC is also to the fore in promoting Digital, Green and Creative excellence in teaching and learning in schools through its management of Digital Education CPD, Sustainability projects, STEAM and the Arts in Education (BLAST), Creative Clusters and Teacher-Artist Partnership. DEC has also been involved since 2019 in the Irish government’s Creative Schools of Excellence Initiative, which is coordinated and facilitated by Dr. Ó Murchú on behalf of DEC, aiming to empower and enable Creative Cluster schools to design for meaningful learning through the medium of XR, AI and game-based learning and design. DEC involves a team of international consultants, former principals and expert advisors who have been intrinsically and centrally involved in EU programmes and projects since the 1990s and have significant previous experience in running and leading strategic EU partnerships, from PLATO to ERASMUS+ KA2. The consortium clearly and crucially benefits from collaboration at the European level as it combines expertise in pedagogy and education (UCY, EA, DEC, CPI), AI research and innovation in core technologies (ARC, LTU), AI ethics (ARC, LTU) educational technology, in terms of design & development, as well as implementation & evaluation (ARC, LTU, EA, CPI, UCY, DEC), education policy development and implementation (CPI, UCY, DEC) and machine learning (ARC, LTU).

PARTNER ROLE:

 DEC, as a highly active Education Centre, providing learning activities to schools and associating with educational stakeholders to implement policy actions and deliver global initiatives in education, focusing on the adoption of educational technology solutions, will lead WP7, which focuses on the transformation of the AI4EDU piloting and evaluation results to meaningful, applicable and effective good practices and guidelines for the AI adoption in education, addressed to the educational community, as well as to policy recommendations for the ethical and inclusive AIEd.