Educating about, through and for human rights in English primary schools : a failure of education policy, classroom practice or teacher attitudes? (original) (raw)
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Educational Review, 2018
The United Nations (UN) asserts that children and young people should have access to human rights education (HRE) and that schools are one of the key means through which HRE should be made available. However, there is currently limited knowledge about the presence and form of HRE in school contexts, and there is no established means through which HRE provision within schools is evaluated. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to support the classification of teachers' responsibilities in relation to HRE and argues that systemic change is needed within education systems if HRE provision is to be realised in more extensive and consistent ways. The curriculum documents of three nations-Australia, England and Swedenwere analysed to determine teacher responsibilities for educating pupils about human rights. The viability of the developed framework was then tested through applying it to the outcomes of these analyses. The theoretical contribution made by the paper deepens knowledge and understandings about the nature of responsibilities placed on teachers to educate pupils about human rights, and provides a foundation from which to stimulate debate about what constitutes effective school-based HRE practices.
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Following the recently published report Building Blocks for Improving HRE within ITE in Scotland (2015), this article identifies some of the challenges facing Human Rights Education (HRE) in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Scotland and provides suggestion for how these could be overcome, or at least alleviated. It argues that HRE in ITE is important not only for equipping teachers with the confidence and skills to be able to provide effective and empowering education in this area in their classrooms, but also for contributing to a broader cultural change where human rights are mainstreamed and accepted to a greater extent within society. The article suggests, however, that a number of changes in both policy and practice would be necessary to overcome the current barriers to HRE and to ensure that education in this area is consistent, widespread and effective.
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Human rights education (HRE) seeks to provide young people with an optimistic sense that we can work towards a more peaceful and socially just world, and that everyone can do something to contribute to securing improvement. But, whilst the academic literature and policy documents frequently position teachers as crucial to promoting human rights and social justice, the literature is also replete with examples of teachers' conservatism, their compliance in the face of authority and their ignorance. In addition, teachers work in institutions which routinely reproduce inequality and promote a narrow individualistic form of competition. This article explores some of the international research literature relating to the role of the teacher in HRE specifically, and more generally in the related fields of citizenship education and social studies, in order to offer some conceptual tools that might be used to critically interrogate practitioners' own beliefs and actions.
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Human rights education is an essential part of preparation for participation in a pluralistic democracy. As Europe aspires to be a continent of democratic states accepting human rights as their basic principles, a human rights ethic should be a feature of all schools within Europe. Human rights education provides an ethical and moral framework for living in community. Moreover, this ethical position is backed in Europe by the powerful legal framework of the European Convention on Human Rights. This paper describes the features of two teachers' human rights education courses based on a structure proposed by Richardson. Both explore the relationship between moral and legal aspects of human rights teaching. The Council of Europe Recommendation on Teaching and Learning about Human Rights in Schools identifies three broad dimensions of human rights education, namely: skills, knowledge and feelings. The latter affective dimension, as well as facts and pedagogy, is critical to successful teacher education in human rights.
Human Rights Education (HRE) emphasises the significance of children learning about, through and for human rights through their lived experiences. Such experiential learning, however, is often limited to instances of enjoyment of rights and disregards experiences of injustice, exclusion or discrimination. By neglecting the 'negative' experiences, including breaches of their human rights, HRE fails in one of its fundamental aims: empowering individuals to exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others. Drawing on a range of legal sources, this article identifies a number of violations of the human rights of children in schools, categorised under five themes: access to school; the curriculum; testing and assessment; discipline; and respect for children's views. It argues that for HRE to achieve its core purpose, it must enable children to identify and challenge breaches of rights in school and elsewhere. To do so, knowledge of law, both domestic and international, has a fundamental role to play. Abstract: Human Rights Education (HRE) emphasises the significance of children learning about, through and for human rights through their lived experiences. Such experiential learning, however, is often limited to instances of enjoyment of rights and disregards experiences of injustice, exclusion or discrimination. By neglecting the 'negative' experiences, including breaches of their human rights, HRE fails in one of its fundamental aims: empowering individuals to exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others. Drawing on a range of legal sources, this article identifies a number of violations of the human rights of children in schools, categorised under five themes: access to school; the curriculum; testing and assessment; discipline; and respect for children's views. It argues that for HRE to achieve its core purpose, it must enable children to identify and challenge breaches of rights in school and elsewhere. To do so, knowledge of law, both domestic and international, has a fundamental role to play.
Educating teachers about human rights: building a rights based culture in Australian schools
Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2016
A well-educated active citizenry is the primary aim of our education systems. An essential component of a well educated citizenry in a civil society is its understanding of the value of human rights and what it means to live with dignity in a community, where rights and freedoms are protected. This paper uses evidence from international and national reports and programs to argue that human rights education should be an essential component of the curriculum in Australian schools. It draws on data from the first national cross-sectoral Australian study investigating the place of human rights education in the school curriculum (Burridge N., Chodkiewicz, A., Payne, A.M.,
Teaching human rights? ‘All hell will break loose!’
Human rights education is a prominent concern of a number of international organisations and has been dominant on the United Nations’ agenda for the past 20 years. The UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) has been followed by the World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005–ongoing) and the recently adopted UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. This article shares findings from a project that aimed to gauge the knowledge of human rights education of students undertaking initial teacher education and childhood practice programmes at one university in Scotland. Students were invited to share their experiences of and attitudes towards human rights education. While some students were confident in their approach to human rights education, others identified barriers, including their own knowledge and the structures acting upon them as teachers. Initial conclusions suggest that education students feel ill-equipped to engage with human rights education and that this issue must be addressed in initial teacher education courses.