What Questions are We Asking? Challenges for Development Education from a Discourse Analysis of National Surveys on Attitudes to Development in Ireland

Abstract

Since the 1980s, there have been many attempts to survey attitudes to development in Ireland. Among these are four surveys of a national sample of the Irish adult population on attitudes to aid and development cooperation and two of a national sample of university and third levels students on attitudes to development issues and global development. This article questions the questions asked in these surveys. It draws on a discourse analysis of question construction with reference to three broad discourses of development; modernist, patronising and critical. The article argues that, despite some reference to a critical discourse, questions asked in the surveys predominantly reflect modernist and patronising discourses of development. These discourses reinforce stereotypical, depoliticised and ethnocentric assumptions of development, deny the complexities of the challenges facing the world today and present development cooperation largely, and uncritically, in terms of help or aid. Questions are raised about the implications of this analysis for development education and for further research in this area.

Keywords

• Attitudes
• Development
• Survey
• Modernist
• Patronising
• Critical Discourses
• Development Education