Children’s rights and school psychology: Historical perspective and implications for the profession

Abstract

School psychology and children's rights have great potential, well beyond what has been realized, for advancing the best interests of children, their communities, and societies. A child rights approach infused into school psychology can significantly contribute to the fulfillment of this potential. To respect and illuminate these factors and possibilities, a brief history of children's rights is presented, its major components as embodied in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and their relevance for education and the school community are clarified, and the opportunities for school psychology to champion and deeply integrate children's rights in policy and practice are explored. Employing this base, a proposal is made for a new social contract between school psychology and those it serves which moves beyond reactive problem oriented interventions to give primacy to proactive promotion of the well-being and full holistic development of the child, employing a prospective human development models emphasizing progressive achievement of self-stewardship for all children.

Democratic citizenship: Responsible life in a free society

“…Elaborating on Hart and Hart's (2014) vision for the profession, we call upon school psychologists to advance the rights of children in schools around the world. One particular way in which school psychologists can accomplish this is by helping children to become democratic citizens.…”

“…A new lens on discipline: A case study As Hart and Hart (2014) so cogently argue, a rights perspective can dramatically transform our approach to schooling and give direction to the way in which school psychologists can work with teachers and administrators to promote children's development as democratic citizens. Article 12 of the Convention states, 'The child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child'.…”

Assuring children’s human right to freedom of opinion and expression in education

“…Enabling children's meaningful participation and the realisation of their communication rights in school requires recognition, acknowledgement and respect through the facilitation of children's individual methods of processing, meaning construction, and knowledge application. Participation must be meaningful (Hart & Hart, 2014). Core to achieving this is a recognition of changing educational pedagogies and technologies that provide choice, freedom and variety to encompass and support children's communication preferences in education contexts (Gillett-Swan & Sargeant, 2017).…”

Young children's enactments of human rights in early childhood education

“…However, the emergence and expansion of human rights for children has had another trajectory. Hart and Pavlovic (1991) argue that children rights were acknowledged in a reverse order: pronouncements of children's social rights to welfare, education and health were made well before claims for children's equal value and freedom (civil rights) or political influence (political rights) surfaced. Starting from a platform of children's right to protection, other rights for children were gradually claimed and acknowledged during the twentieth century: first socio-economic human rights and later civil and political rights (UN 1989;Quennerstedt 2009).…”