Teaching human rights? ‘All hell will break loose!’

Abstract

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)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(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.

A Critical Analysis of the Explicit and Implicit Treatment of Human Rights Education in Early Childhood Education Textbooks

“…There is a common belief among many adults, but especially teachers, practitioners and families, that children have too many rights and not enough responsibilities (Cassidy et al, 2014). In fact, Waldron and Oberman (2016) found that teachers recognize the importance of HRE but are more focused on promoting a culture of conformity and responsibility.…”

Educational aims of rights education in primary school – zooming in on teachers and pupils in two classes

“…Strong support in national curricula is pointed out as necessary if rights education is to take place. Several studies have demonstrated that human rights often is a cross-curricular issue (Cayir and Türkan Bagli 2011;Cassidy, Brunner, and Webster 2013;Phillips 2016;Robinson 2017). That the responsibility for education about human rights is thereby spread over several school subjects can be both a strength and a risk.…”

“…Research that highlights the significance of the teacher for rights education has identified some obstacles for a successful rights education. One is that teachers' knowledge of human rights often seems to be insufficient (Cassidy, Brunner, and Webster 2013). Teachers themselves express uncertainty about human rights teaching, largely because they see human rights as a complex and multi-layered issue and are unsure about what to include and focus on, and how to teach human rights (Cayir and Türkan Bagli 2011).…”

Interpreting Children’s Rights Education: Three perspectives and three roles for teachers

“…As a consequence of this simplified model teachers tend to be seen as either compliant or as obstacles, and problems largely arise from teachers' ignorance of children's rights (Cassidy et al, 2014). For example, Howe and Covell (2005) have argued that teachers' often adopt a negative approach to CRE and Figue (2013) and Leung et al (2011) report that many teachers see children's rights as a threat to adult authority (thus failing to understand the appropriate role of adult duty bearers).…”