Human Rights Education Globally [1st ed.] 9789402419122, 9789402419139

Citation preview

Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research 22

Joseph Zajda Editor

Human Rights Education Globally

Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research Volume 22 Series Editor Joseph  Zajda, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University, East Melbourne, VIC, Australia Editorial Board for the Series Robert Arnove, Indiana University Birgit Brock-Utne, University of Oslo Martin Carnoy, Stanford University Lyn Davies, University of Birmingham Fred Dervin, University of Helsinki Karen Evans, University of London Kassie Freeman, Alcorn State University MacLeans Geo-JaJa, Brigham Young University Deborah Henderson, Queensland University of Technology Andreas Kazamias, University of Wisconsin Tatiana Koval, Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education, Moscow Leslie Limage, UNESCO Susan Majhanovich, University of Western Ontario Marcella Mollis, University of Buenos Aires Nikolai Nikandrov, President, Russian Academy of Education (Moscow) Val Rust, UCLA, USA John Whitehouse, University of Melbourne Vince Wright, Educational Consultant, Hilltop, Taupo, NZ Advisory Board Abdeljalil Akkari, University of Geneva Beatrice Avalos, National Ministry of Education, Chile Sheng Yao Cheng, Chung Chen University Kingsley Banya, Misericordia University Karen Biraimah, University of Central Florida David Chapman, University of Minnesota Mark Ginsburg, University of Pittsburgh Yaacov Iram, Bar Ilan University Henry Levin, Teachers College Columbia University Noel McGinn, Harvard University David Phillips, Oxford University Gerald Postglione, University of Hong Kong Heidi Ross, Indiana University M’hammed Sabour, University of Joensuu Jurgen Schriewer, Humboldt University Sandra Stacki, Hofstra University Nelly Stromquist, University of Maryland Carlos Torres, UCLA David Willis, Soai University, Japan

Aims and Scope The Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research series (Vols. 13–24) aims to present a global overview of strategic comparative and international education policy statements on recent reforms and shifts in education globally and offers new approaches to further exploration, development and improvement of comparative education and policy research globally. In general, the book series seeks to address the nexus between comparative education, policy, reforms and forces of globalisation. The series will present up-to-date scholarly research on global trends in comparative education and policy research. The idea is to advance research and scholarship by providing an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information for researchers, policy-makers, college academics and practitioners in the field. Different volumes will provide substantive contributions to knowledge and understanding of comparative education and policy research globally. This new book series will offer major disciplinary perspectives from all world regions. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6932

Joseph Zajda Editor

Human Rights Education Globally

Editor Joseph Zajda School of Education the Australian Catholic University East Melbourne, Australia

ISSN 2543-0564     ISSN 2543-0572 (electronic) Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research ISBN 978-94-024-1912-2    ISBN 978-94-024-1913-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1913-9 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature B.V. The registered company address is: Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3311 GX Dordrecht, The Netherlands

To Rea, Nikolai, Sophie, Imogen and Belinda

Foreword

Human Rights Education Globally, the 22nd book in the 24-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, sets out to examine human rights education globally. The book presents an overview of selected research concerning global and comparative trends in dominant discourses on human rights education. It analyses major human rights education reforms and policy issues in a global culture, with a focus on the ambivalent and problematic relationship between human rights education discourses, ideology and the state. Human rights education is essential in maintaining democracy, equality, freedom and the full realisation of human rights. It contributes significantly to promoting equality and respect for human dignity, preventing discrimination and enhancing participation in democratic processes. It reflects societal standards that need to be learned by each generation and transferred to the next. The United Nations produced two important policy documents on human rights in 1966: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1966) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (drafted in 1954 and signed in 1966). The latter declared that all humans have the rights to health, food and employment. In addition, the United Nations’ (2015) Millennium Development Goals Report focused on poverty eradication as the greatest global challenge facing the world and economic rights, such as food, health and education (United Nations, 2015). Its first goal was to ‘Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’ (p. 14). However, what is also missing in the discourse of human rights education is the politics of human rights. It has to be accepted that human rights policy documents are not neutral, but are inherently political in their origin, development and application. The book draws upon recent studies in the area of human rights education globally and the role of the state. The chapters offer a timely analysis of current issues affecting neo-liberal education policy research globally and provide ideas about future directions that education and policy reforms could take.

vii

Preface

Series title: Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research (24-­volume series) Human Rights Education Globally offers a synthesis of current research findings on the nexus between human rights education, ideology and the state. When analysing the human rights education research, situated amidst the role of the state, and dominant ideologies defining policy priorities, we need to go beyond the functionalist and business-oriented model of education, which focuses on accountability, efficiency and performance indicators. Why? Because there are other social, economic, political and cultural forces at work as well. From the macrosocial perspective, the world of business, while real and dominant, is only one dimension of the complex social, cultural and economic world system. At the macrosocietal level, we need to consider the teleological goal of education reforms. Are we reforming education systems to improve the quality of learning and teaching, academic achievement and excellence, and do we hope to change our societies, creating the ‘good society’? The creation of a more equitable, respectful, inclusive and just society for everyone is a dream for all concerned citizens on spaceship Earth, be they democratic policy-­ makers, or empowering and egalitarian pedagogues, and informed and active citizens, who believe in human rights education. The United Nations declared 1995–2004 as the Decade of Human Rights Education. It stressed that the human rights education was a powerful tool to fight racism and discrimination in all spheres of education and in society. Social and cultural dimensions of human rights education include ideology, power, inequality, education, gender, ethnicity, race, religion and social justice. Since the turn of the millennium, human rights scholars and practitioners have advocated specifically for the integration of human rights into the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set the international development agenda for 2001–2015. There is a need to go beyond a humanistic perspective of human rights, as declared by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights document in 1948, towards a politico-economic perspective of human rights. Human rights idea is essentially social, economic and political construct, designed to preserve and maintain democracy, freedom, equality and social justice for all. ix

x

Preface

Human rights education movements are present and growing. The evaluation of recent research in HRE demonstrates that HRE can be an effective tool in creating a sense of intercultural respect and understanding. Finally, there is a need to situate HRE research and various discourses surrounding HRE policy documents and pedagogy, within the context of dominant ideologies, and against the background of the role of the state, identity politics and nation-building. East Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Joseph Zajda

Series Editor

Joseph Zajda, BA (Hons), MA, MEd, PhD, FACE, coordinates and lectures graduate courses, particularly MTeach courses (EDFX522, EDSS503 and EDFD546), in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus. He specialises in globalisation and education policy reforms, social justice, history education, human rights education and values education. He has written and edited 30 books and over 120 book chapters and articles in the areas of globalisation and education policy, higher education, history textbooks and curriculum reforms. His recent publications include Third International Handbook on Globalisation, Education and Policy Research (Dordrecht: Springer, 2020); Globalisation, Ideology and Education Reforms: Emerging Paradigms (Dordrecht: Springer, 2020); Human Rights Education Globally (Dordrecht: Springer, 2020); Globalisation, Ideology and Neo-liberal Higher Education Reforms (Dordrecht: Springer, with D.  Henderson, 2020); Globalisation and Education Reforms: Paradigms and Ideologies (Dordrecht: Springer, http://www.springer.com/gp/ book/9789402412031, 2018); Globalisation and National Identity in History Textbooks: The Russian Federation (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017); Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders: Symbolic Representations in School Textbooks (Dordrecht: Springer, with Tsyrlina-Spady and Lovorn, 2017); Globalisation, Human Rights Education and Reforms (Dordrecht: Springer, with S.  Ozdowski, 2017); and Globalisation and Higher Education Reforms (Dordrecht: Springer, with Rust, 2016). Moreover, he is Editor and Author of the Second International Handbook on Globalisation, Education and Policy Research (Springer, 2015, http:// www.springer.com/education+%26+language/book/978-94-017-9492-3); ‘The Russian Revolution’ (2014) in G. Ritzer and J. M. Ryan (Eds.) The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization Online; ‘Ideology’ (2014) and ‘Values Education’ (2008 and 2014) in D.  Phillips (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy (Thousand Oaks: Sage); and Schooling the New Russians: Transforming Soviet Workers to Capitalist Entrepreneurs (Melbourne: James Nicholas Publishers).

xi

xii

Series Editor

He is the Editor of the twenty-four-volume book series Globalisation and Comparative Education (Springer, 2013&2021). He edits the following journals below: https://www.jamesnicholaspublishers.com.au/curriculum-and-teaching/ Curriculum and Teaching, volume 34, 2020 https://www.jamesnicholaspublishers.com.au/education-and-society/ Education and Society, volume 37, 2020 https://www.jamesnicholaspublishers.com.au/world-studies-in-education/ World Studies in Education, volume 20, 2020

Editor, Editor, Editor,

His works are found in 445 publications in 4 languages and some 10,500 university library holdings globally. He is the recipient of the 2012 Excellence in Research Award of the Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, which recognises the high quality of research activities and particularly celebrates sustained research that has had a substantive impact nationally and internationally. He was also the recipient of the Australian Awards for University Teaching in 2011 (Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, for an innovative, influential and sustained contribution to teacher education through scholarship and publication) and the Vice Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Award at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus. He was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant (with Monash University) for 2011–2015 for a comparative analysis of history national curriculum implementation in Russia and Australia ($315,000). Also, he was elected as Fellow of the Australian College of Educators in June 2013. Furthermore, he completed (with Professor Fred Dervin, University of Helsinki) the UNESCO report Governance in Education: Diversity and Effectiveness – BRICS countries (Paris: UNESCO (2020)). Faculty of Education and Arts Australian Catholic University Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Joseph Zajda

Editorial by Series Editors

Volume 22 is a further publication in the Springer book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research edited by Joseph Zajda. Human Rights Education Globally, the 22nd book in the 24-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research edited by Joseph Zajda (Series Editor), presents a global overview of selected scholarly research on global and comparative trends in dominant discourses of human rights education. The book explores conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches applicable in the research covering the state, globalisation and human rights education. Various book chapters critique the dominant discourses and debates pertaining to human rights education. The spirit of dialogical encounter has very soundly directed the editor and the book chapter writers’ efforts in organising this volume. The editor’s task is to deepen, and in some cases open widely, diverse and significant discourses related to human rights education and the politics surrounding the debate. The book critiques the ambivalent and problematic relationship between the state, globalisation and human rights education discourses. Using a number of diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to globalisation, the authors, by focusing on globalisation, ideology and human rights education, attempt to examine critically recent trends in human rights education and their impact on identity politics. The authors focus on discourses surrounding three major dimensions affecting the human rights education: national identity, democracy and ideology. These are among the most critical and significant dimensions defining and contextualising the processes surrounding the nation-building and identity politics globally. Furthermore, the perception of globalisation as dynamic and multi-faceted processes clearly necessitates a multiple-perspective approach in the study of human rights education, and this book provides that perspective commendably. In the book, the authors, who come from diverse backgrounds and regions, attempt insightfully to provide a worldview of current developments in research concerning human rights education and citizenship education globally. The book contributes, in a very scholarly way, to a more holistic understanding of the nexus between nation-state, human rights education and national identity globally and provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information about the international concern xiii

xiv

Editorial by Series Editors

in the field of human rights education and citizenship education. Above all, the book offers the latest findings on discourses surrounding trends in human rights education in the global culture. The chapters offer a timely analysis of current issues affecting human rights education policy research globally and provide ideas about future directions that education and policy reforms could take. We thank the anonymous international reviewers who have reviewed and assessed the proposal for the continuation of the series (volumes 13–24) and many other anonymous reviewers who reviewed the chapters in the final manuscript.

Contents

1 Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally ������������������    1 Joseph Zajda 2 A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education��������������   13 Yvonne Vissing 3 Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden and the United States ����������������������������������������   51 Felisa Tibbitts, Thomas Nygren, Judit Novak, Denise Bentrovato, Johan Wassermann, and Anamika 4 The State of HRE in Higher Education Worldwide������������������������������   75 Sarita Cargas 5 Human Rights Education as a Link to the Counterbalance Strategy of the Sanctuary Cities Against Federal Immigration Programs in the USA��������������������������������������������������������   91 Leonardo Diaz Abraham 6 The Promises and Challenges of Human Rights Cities������������������������  109 Gillian MacNaughton, Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, Esther Kamau, Shahrzad Sajadi, and Prisca Tarimo 7 HRE in the Era of Global Aging: The Human Rights of Older Persons in Contemporary Europe������������������������������������������  133 Boguslawa Bednarczyk 8 The Contribution of Peer Mediation to the Implementation of Human Rights Education��������������������������������������������������������������������  159 Sylvie Condette

xv

xvi

Contents

9 Human Rights as an Instrument of Social Cohesion in South Asia��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  173 Sev Ozdowski 10 Evaluating Research on Human Rights Education Globally��������������  201 Joseph Zajda Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  209

Contributors

Dr.  Anamika is Deputy Adviser with the Unit of International Cooperation, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India. Dr. Anamika has taught at the Department of Education, University of Delhi, and at the Department of Elementary Education, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. She is also on the International Editorial Board of Human Rights Education Review Journal. Dr. Anamika has been doing an international project on Human Rights, Peace and Sustainability in Education and presented the results of the project at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, Sweden. She has also participated in the International Summer School at George Eckert Institute, Brunswick, Germany. Dr. Anamika obtained a PhD from the Department of Education, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. She has also received Australian Aid (AusAID) grant to present a paper on “Pedagogy of Human Rights Education in Taiwan and Human Rights Culture” at the Second International Conference on Human Rights Education in Durban, South Africa. Email: [email protected]  

Boguslawa Bednarczyk was Professor and Dean of the Department of International Relations (2002–2012) and is currently the Director of the Human Rights Center (2006–present) at the A. F. Modrzewski University, Krakow, Poland. Until 2014 she was Professor at the Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Her academic and research interests focus on legal and political aspects of human rights protection and promotion, history of political ideas, and international relations. She has published numerous articles on different aspects of human rights in various journals and has spoken on international issues at international conferences throughout Europe, the USA, Asia, and Africa. Email: [email protected]  

Denise  Bentrovato Department of Humanities Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is co-director of the African Association for History Education (AHE-Afrika) and a researcher and extraordinary lecturer in History Didactics in the Department of Humanities Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa.  

xvii

xviii

Contributors

Denise is currently also a research fellow in the History Department of the University of Leuven, Belgium, and a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Social Sciences at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Goma in eastern Congo. Her research combines interests in history education, memory politics, and identity formation and primarily focuses on post-colonial and post-conflict societies in Africa, including Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. An important part of her work relates to examining educational responses to historical wrongs within the framework of nation-building and transitional justice processes. Throughout her career, she has worked both in academia and for international organizations and NGOs in Africa and Europe, including UNESCO. Denise was recently appointed Secretary of the International Research Association for History and Social Sciences Education and is on the Editorial Board of its International Journal for History and Social Sciences Education and of Yesterday and Today, a publication of the South African Society for History Teaching. Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Sarita Cargas is Associate Professor at UNM, Honors College. Dr. Cargas earned her DPhil from Oxford University. Dr. Cargas’ teaching and research interest is human rights with an additional focus on explicitly teaching critical thinking. Her courses include the topics of the history of human rights: “A Humane Legacy”; a course on “Globalization and Human Rights,” which uses food insecurity as a case study; and “Solutions to Human Rights Problems,” which emphasizes what various entities contribute to solving human rights abuses. The critical thinking class “Why People Believe Weird Things” has the dual goal of teaching students to be aware of the inherent biases in their thinking and provide the tools to become more sophisticated practitioners of thought. Dr. Cargas has forthcoming articles in Human Rights Quarterly and Honors in Practice and is working on a book about how the biggest organizations promote human rights (governments, United Nations, NGOs, and multinational corporations). Email: [email protected]  

Sylvie  Condette PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Sciences of Education at Lille University (France); she belongs to the CIREL Research Laboratory (Lille Inter-university Center for Education). Her research topics and publications focus on school governance and community members’ criteria for involvement into school life, including content and stakes of citizenship education, scope of peer mediation, quality of interactions and relationships between students and teachers, and improvement of school climate. Email: [email protected]  

Leonardo  Diaz  Abraham, is Professor, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México City, México. He has completed his graduate studies at the Graduate Institute of Development and Cooperation of the Complutense University of Madrid. He also earned his BA in Political Science and Public Administration at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, with honors. He has participated in conferences and seminars in Mexico, Spain, France, England and Ukraine. He has served since 1997 as a full-time research professor at the Autonomous University of Campeche.  

Contributors

xix

He is currently teaching in the Department of Social Sciences at the Autonomous Metropolitan University. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on issues related to political and economic history of Mexico, functions and dynamics of the local public administration in Mexico, State and Public Administration in Mexico, and international cooperation for development and human rights. Email: [email protected] Esther Kamau is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Esther has over 10 years of experience in the humanitarian and development fields. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked with an international NGO coordinating humanitarian action in nine East African countries. Her research focuses on the contribution of economic and social rights to improve the well-being of the most vulnerable populations. Esther holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Commerce from Daystar University, Kenya, an Honors degree in Development Studies from the University of South Africa, and a Master of Arts degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University, USA. E-mail: [email protected]  

Gillian MacNaughton JD, DPhil, is Associate Professor of Human Rights in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, an affiliate member of the Economic and Social Rights Research Group at the University of Connecticut, and an international human rights lawyer. She previously served as the Executive Director of the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy at Northeastern University School of Law; has taught at Brandeis University (USA), the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia), and the University of Oxford (UK); and has consulted on projects for WHO, UNICEF, The World Bank, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, and several NGOs. Dr. MacNaughton works on international human rights, focusing on economic and social rights, primarily the rights to health, education, and decent work. She is also interested in the relationship of economic and social rights to equality rights, human rights-based approaches to social justice, and human rights-based methodologies and tools, including human rights impact assessment and indicators. Dr. MacNaughton has received funding for her research from the Law and Society Association and the World Health Organization. She has published over 40 refereed articles and book chapters, as well as a book, co-edited with Diane F.  Frey, Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World (Cambridge University Press 2018). Email: [email protected]  

Sindiso  Mnisi Weeks, LLB, DPhil is Assistant Professor in Public Policy of Excluded Populations at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Adjunct Associate Professor in Public Law at the University of Cape Town. Her work has combined research, advocacy, and policy work on women, property, governance, dispute management, and participation under customary law and the South African Constitution. Dr. Mnisi Weeks received her DPhil from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, as a Rhodes Scholar, and previously clerked for  

xx

Contributors

then Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Dikgang Moseneke. Dr. Mnisi Weeks authored Access to Justice and Human Security: Cultural Contradictions in Rural South Africa (Routledge, 2018) and co-authored African Customary Law in South Africa: Post-Apartheid and Living Law Perspectives (OUPSA, 2015). E-mail: [email protected] Judit  Novak is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo, Norway, and Researcher at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her main research interests are in education governance and policy, with a special interest in the intermediary role of government agencies and the adaptation of forms of supervision and auditing policies to (new) legislation in local, national, and international contexts. Her research contributions raise fundamental questions concerning welfare state governance and the links between juridification (the drift toward legalism) and education through the intermediary agencies situated between the state and educational institutions. Since 2019, Judit is an elected member of the Steering Committee for the Research Institute for Educational Law at Uppsala University. Email: [email protected]  

Thomas Nygren is Associate Professor at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. His research interests focus on history education, the digital impact on education, critical thinking, and human rights education. Thomas is head of the research node Global Citizenship Education in Historical and Critical Perspectives (GLOC) at Uppsala University and a project studying the complexity of formulating and implementing peace and human rights in education. His previous research, conducted also at Umeå University and Stanford University, has been published in books and journals of education, history, digital humanities, and media studies. In current research projects, the News Evaluator, YouCheck! and Under Pressure, Thomas investigates how education may support students’ digital civic literacy and help citizens navigate misinformation. ORCID ID 0000-0003-1884-3252. Email: [email protected]  

Sev Ozdowski OAM, is Director, Equity and Diversity at the University of Western Sydney; Hon. Professor in the Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies, the University of Sydney; and President of the Australian Council for Human Rights Education. He played a major role in the development of federal multicultural and human rights policies and institutions in Australia. As the Human Rights Commissioner (2000–05) in Australia, he conducted the ground-breaking National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention: A last resort?” and the National Inquiry into Mental Health Services “Not for Service.” Sev has worked in senior government positions for over 20  years and published widely on refugee issues, multiculturalism, and human rights. Currently he works at two Australian universities and is Chair of the Australian Multicultural Council and of the Australian Council for Human Rights Education. Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]  

Contributors

xxi

Shahrzad Sajadi is a PhD candidate and graduate assistant at the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She received her BA in Law from Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran, Iran, and her MA in Journalism from Emerson College in Boston. In 2017, she investigated the state of mental health services and suicide rates at county jails across the state of Massachusetts, USA. Shahrzad’s current research focuses on the systems’ failure to include marginalized groups, and she recently finished working on a study funded by the US Social Security Administration on the access of jail inmates to federal benefits. E-mail: [email protected]  

Prisca Tarimo is a PhD candidate and graduate research assistant in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She received her BA from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and her MA from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, USA. Her studies and research have an emphasis on global health, health disparities, and human rights. Prisca is currently exploring the use of a human rights–based approach to promote human-centered, real-world policy and practices to advance women’s reproductive health. E-mail: prisca.tarimo001@ umb.edu  

Felisa  Tibbitts is Professor, Department of Law, Economics and Governance, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands. She is dedicated to the role education can play in advancing human rights. She is UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Higher Education and Carla Atzema-Looman Chair in Human Rights Education at the Human Rights Centre of Utrecht University (Netherlands). Prof. Tibbitts is also a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa) and lecturer in the Comparative and International Education Program at Teachers College of Columbia University. Her research and policy interests include peace, human rights, and global citizenship education; curriculum policy and reform; critical pedagogy; and human rights and higher education transformation. In addition to her widespread scholarship, Prof. Tibbitts has written practical resources on curriculum, program development, and evaluation on behalf of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF, UNESCO, OSCE/ODIHR, the Council of Europe, and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and the Open Society Foundations. Felisa was a Fulbright Fellow at Lund University, Sweden (Fall 2014), and a Human Rights Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2011–2013). Felisa is the co-founder and former director of Human Rights Education Associates. She has guest edited special issues of Intercultural Education and Journal of Social Science Education. E-mail: [email protected]  

Yvonne Vissing is Professor and Policy Chair for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Founding Director of the Center for Childhood & Youth Studies, and Chair of the Sociology Department at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Vissing has also created a nonprofit organization to assist communities to advocate for improved community, child, and family services.  

xxii

Contributors

Author of five books with several others near completion, Dr. Vissing has presented her work at international and national meetings and is engaged in work that has both an international and a domestic focus. A true child advocate, she has trained thousands of professionals and students in a framework that is based upon the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child to work with, and for, children’s rights. As the research director for the Department of Sociology, Dr. Vissing conducts both quantitative and qualitative research, and coordinates her region’s annual research conference. Her main areas of concentration have focused upon economic well-being of children and families, education, health, legal rights, and community obligation and comprehensive services. Dr. Vissing worked to create a national peace conference for youth, has been a major contributor to Oxford University’s Encyclopedia of Peace. Email: [email protected] Johan  Wassermann is a Professor of History Education at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and also the Head of the Department of Humanities Education at the same institution. He holds a Doctorate from the University of Pretoria and Master’s degrees from the Universities of Rhodes and the Free State. Prof. Wasserman is the co-founder of the non-profit organization, African Association for History Education (AHE-Afrika), which has as its aim the advancement of History Education across Africa. Currently he is the editor-in-chief of Yesterday & Today and the educational editor of The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa. His research activities generally center on history and history education. More specifically his current research interests are on youth and history, history textbooks, teaching controversial issues in post-conflict Africa, life histories, and minorities and the minoritized in colonial Natal. His research work has been published in journals, as book chapters and as books. Email: [email protected]  

Joseph Zajda (Australian Catholic University, Melbourne) is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne Campus). He specializes in globalization and education policy reforms, social justice, history education, and values education. Joseph has written and edited 45 books and over 120 book chapters and articles in the areas of globalization and education policy, higher education, and curriculum reforms. Recent publications include: Zajda, J. (2018). Globalisation and education reforms: Paradigms and ideologies. Dordrecht:Springer. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789402412031; Zajda, J. (2017). Globalisation and National Identity in History Textbooks: The Russian Federation. Dordrecht: Springer; Zajda, J. Tsyrlina-Spady, T. & Lovorn, M. (2017) (Eds.). Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders: Symbolic Representations in School Textbooks. Dordrecht: Springer; Zajda, J. & Ozdowski, S. (2017). (Eds.), Globalisation and Human Rights Education Dordrecht: Springer; Russian Revolution (2014). In G. Ritzer & J. M. Ryan (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization Online; Zajda, J. (2014). Values education. In D. Phillips (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. Thousand Oaks: Sage; Zajda, J. (2020). Globalisation and education reforms. In G.  Ritzer (Ed.), Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (2nd ed). Joseph is also the edi 

Contributors

xxiii

tor of the 24-volume book series Globalisation and Comparative Education (Springer, 2009&2021). He edits World Studies in Education, Curriculum and Teaching and Education and Society for James Nicholas Publishers. Joseph’s works are found in 445 publications in 4 languages and some 10,500 university library holdings globally. He was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant (with Monash University) for 2011–2015 for a comparative analysis of history national curriculum implementation in Russia and Australia ($315,000). Joseph was elected as Fellow of the Australian College of Educators (June 2013). ORCID ID https://orcid. org/0000-0003-4422-9782 (Email: [email protected])

Chapter 1

Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally Joseph Zajda

Abstract  Globalisations, economic, cultural and social change over the last four decades have affected the nature of the discourse in human rights education. The chapter explores human rights education research and the problematic relationship between human rights education and the state, against the background of globalisation, and economic, political, social and cultural factors. Human rights education is an attempt to answer the following question: How can we contribute to the creation of a more equitable, respectful, peaceful and just society for everyone globally. Keywords  Access · Accountability · Children’s rights · Citizenship education · Critical pedagogy · Culture · Democracy · Discourse · Discrimination · Equality · Ethnicity · Freedom · Globalization · Human rights · Human rights education · Human rights policy documents · Human rights violations · Ideology · Inequality · Justice · Moral education · Poverty · Poverty eradication · Prejudice · Social action · Social inequality · Social justice · Social stratification · Tolerance · United Nations · UNESCO · Values

Research on Human Rights Education: History Human rights education is essential to maintaining democracy, equality, freedom, and the full realization of human rights. It contributes significantly to promoting equality, respect for human dignity, preventing discrimination and enhancing participation in democratic processes. It reflects societal standards that need to be learned by each generation and transferred to the next. The United Nations produced two important policy documents on human rights in 1966: The International

J. Zajda (*) School of Education, the Australian Catholic University, East Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 J. Zajda (ed.), Human Rights Education Globally, Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1913-9_1

1

2

J. Zajda

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1966), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (drafted in 1954 and signed in 1966). The later declared that all humans have the rights to health, food and employment. In addition, the United Nations’ (2015) Millennium Development Goals Report focused on poverty eradication as the greatest global challenge facing the world, and economic rights, such as food, health, and education (United Nations 2015). Its first goal was to ‘Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’ (p. 14). However, what is also missing in the discourse of human rights education is the politics of human rights. It has to be accepted that human rights policy documents are not neutral, but are inherently political in their origin, development and application (Zajda 2018). There is a great deal of empirical evidence on the occurrence of different types of human rights violations in many countries today. In its 2019 Human Rights Risk Atlas, global analytics firm Maplecroft revealed that in the past 6 years, the number of countries with an ‘extreme risk’ of human rights offenses has risen dramatically to 34 (The Human Rights Risk Atlas 2015). Human rights education research has grown in its significance since its humble beginnings in 1948, when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which established the right to education by declaring in its Preamble that we all should ‘strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms’ and in Article 26 directing us to work for ‘the full development of the human personality and to strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.’ During the last 70 years human rights policies and standards were defined and a range of education programs, curricula and best practices were developed, both internationally and locally, to advance human rights education. Initially, UNESCO took the UDHR challenge and become the first noted human rights education world champion. However, only after the end of Cold War, human rights education became a core activity for the United Nations and its agencies. The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights was the circuit breaker. The resulting Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action acknowledged that human rights education is ‘essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace.’ (Part II.  D, para. 78). The key advancements followed with the announcement of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) and establishment of the 2005 World Program for Human Rights Education of which the third phase is to continue to 2019. Added to this is the integration of human rights into the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2001–2015. The Millennium Declaration recognized the ‘interdependence of social development, human rights and global peace’ (MacNaughton and Koutsioumpas 2017). By now, the human rights education is not only about UN pronouncements or officially endorsed standards and pedagogy, but is also an important social movement with many grass roots activities aiming to make a difference by making human rights accessible to all (Zajda 2020).

1  Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally

3

Defining Human Rights There are numerous definitions and conceptions of human rights. There exists a global consensus that human rights refer to freedom, justice, and equality: the rights that are considered by most societies to belong automatically to everyone. Ozdowski (2015) stresses that human rights help us to recognise that every person has ‘inherent dignity and value’ and that in this sense human rights are global— they are the same for all people. This is what makes human rights truly universal and global. Furthermore, human rights, from a cultural perspective, are international mores, and norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Human rights include the right to freedom, diversity, privacy, due process, and property rights. The right to freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial, and the right to engage in political activity are significant principles of a pluralist democracy. These rights exist in morality and in law at the national and international levels. The main sources of the contemporary conception of human rights are the Universal Declaration of Human Right. The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights defined the fundamental rights of people, including: • • • • • •

The right to life Freedom of thought, opinion, and religion The right to a fair trial and equality before the law The right to work and education Freedom from torture and arbitrary arrest The right to participate in the social, political and cultural life of one’s country.

Social and Cultural Dimension of Human Rights Education The creation of a more equitable, respectful, inclusive, and just society for everyone is a dream for all concerned citizens on spaceship Earth, be they democratic policy makers, empowering and egalitarian pedagogues, and informed and active citizens, who believe in human rights education and the much needed policy reform. The United Nations declared 1995–2004 as the Decade of Human Rights Education. It stressed that the human rights education was a powerful tool to fight racism and discrimination in all spheres of education and in society. Social and cultural dimensions of human rights education include ideology, power, inequality, education, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and social justice. Since the turn of the Millennium, human rights scholars and practitioners have advocated specifically for the integration of human rights into the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set the international development agenda for 2001–2015. While they were largely unsuccessful in securing a human

4

J. Zajda

rights-based approach to the MDGs, the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which establish the 2016–2030 agenda, are more promising. MacNaughton and Koutsioumpas (2017), propose a comprehensive universal human rights education during the compulsory years of schooling as an integral part of the SDG framework. Human rights education is required by international law, it is effective in building a culture of respect for human rights and it will build bridges between law, education and international development communities toward the common aims of eradicating poverty, realizing human rights and achieving global peace. MacNaughton and Koutsioumpas (2017) comment on some progress in the human rights education in the USA, but note some challenges and gaps: One of the most evident is the lack of any serious system of accountability for the legal and ethical obligation to ensure universal human rights education. This gap could be partially filled by the UN human rights mechanisms, including the human rights treaty bodies, which could take a more active role in defining the legal obligations that States have in implementing universal human rights education. The human rights mechanisms could also hold States to account for their failures to ensure comprehensive and meaningful human rights education throughout the free and compulsory school years (MacNaughton and Koutsioumpas 2017).

Monaghan and Spreen offer (2017) a more nuanced, reflective, and contextual account of the historical particularity of human rights education, through the lens of globalisation and migration. They explore the recent shift from HRE to Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and argue for the continuing and renewed emphasis and action on behalf of HRE. They also examine critically some key principles that are necessary for programs to realize the promise of “human rights education as the new civics education for the new world order”. Sirota (2017) in her comparative research findings has demonstrated that human rights education has played a key role in two social movements addressing injustice, the civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Major discourses of human rights education remain at a policy rhetoric and humanistic pedagogy level. As such they tend to be uncritical of the existing status quo of legitimized social and economic inequality. We could ask the following: What social action is needed to move from proclaiming the rights and obligations of people in a given country, towards effective and empowering implementation of those rights and obligations? How can we best ensure that the rhetoric of human rights is matched by reality? We need to recognise that the ideology and the politics of human rights play a significant part in the discourse of human rights education. Furthermore, there is an ambivalent nexus between social stratification, inequality and human rights. The greater the social inequality, the less one finds human rights and social justice. The prospect of widening inequalities in education, due to market-­ oriented schooling, and substantial tolerance of inequalities and exclusion, are more than real (Milanovic 2012, 2013, 2016). Access and equity continue to be enduring concerns in education. This was confirmed in the OECD (2009) study: ‘Across OECD countries, over 40% with less than an upper secondary qualification are not even employed…Even those with higher levels of education are vulnerable if they become unemployed. Around half of the unemployed young adults aged 25-34 with

1  Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally

5

lower and upper secondary attainments are long-term unemployed’ (OECD 2009, p. 13).

Children’s Rights Human rights education is particularly relevant to teaching children’s rights. Ozdowski (2009b) in An absence of human rights: Children in Detention, stated that ‘The imprisonment of children under mandatory detention policy in Australia’s detention camps was one of the worst, if not the worst, human rights violations in the Australia’s post World War II history’. Children have the right to special protection because of their defencelessness against mistreatment. The first United Nations statement devoted exclusively to the rights of children was the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1959. This was a moral rather than a legally binding document. In 1989 the legally binding Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the United Nations. In 54 articles the Convention incorporates the whole spectrum of human rights – civil, political, economic, social and cultural – and sets out the specific ways these should be ensured for children and young people. • Around 11 million children die each year from largely preventable diseases caused by lack of clean water and inadequate health care. Through improved access to clean water, food and immunisation, the lives of many children are being saved. • Around 101 million primary school age children worldwide are not enrolled in school. Most of these are girls. Millions more children are enrolled in schools now than at any time in history. • Around one in six children aged from five to 14, 16% of this age group, are working around the world. • Close to 2 million children have been killed in armed conflicts in the past decade. • Nearly all countries in the world have signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and committed themselves to promoting, protecting and fulfilling the rights of children (Zajda 2010).

Conceptualising Human Rights Education Fundamentally, human rights education movement refers to the transfer and acquisition of knowledge concerning human rights and the necessary skills of how to apply them. Human rights education is also about adoption of universal values and behaviours that are respectful of others and compliant with such universal standards. This is especially important in a globalised world, where many different cultures and religions meet and need to interact peacefully (Zajda 2015). The UDHR

6

J. Zajda

in particular, and other relevant treaties, provide us with universally agreed basic standards of decent behaviour; standards that are cross-cultural and trans-national. Thus, human rights education provides us with an all-important link between universal and therefore global human rights standards and local values and practices (Zajda and Ozdowski 2017). As such, human rights education encourages intercultural dialogue, reduces conflict and builds mutual respect around universal values. It delivers an important peace building capacity, as it develops the relevant knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes: all necessary for a peaceful and harmonious co-existence. It also empowers individuals to participate in a broader community and in authentic democratic processes which promote inclusive citizenship, equality and advancement of the rule of law (Ozdowski 2005). Some recent research suggests that human rights education does not address our growing diversity and interdependence, which is needed to help students address global complexities affecting their lives (Spreen and Monaghan 2015). We need to explore research dealing with the recent shift from HRE to Global Citizenship Education (GCE) (Dill 2013; Spreen and Monaghan 2015). There are many models of human rights education. Tibbitts (2012) for example, identifies three predominant models that are ‘linked implicitly with particular target groups and a strategy for social change and human development’ (p. 163). These include the Values and Awareness Model, which focuses on HRE in school curricula and public awareness campaigns as a primary vehicle of transmitting basic knowledge of human rights issues and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); the Accountability Model which targets professionals directly involved in public or civil service (e.g. lawyers, policemen) and focuses on knowledge related to specific rights instruments and mechanisms of protection; and the Transformational Model which seeks to empower vulnerable populations to recognize human rights abuses and to commit to their prevention (see also Tibbitts 2008).

Current Research on Human Rights Education Contemporary research questions in human rights education can be summarized as follows: 1. How can researchers and educators better understand and analyse human rights education within specific cultural contexts. 2. How are human rights conceptualised in different nations globally? 3. Will a better knowledge and critical understanding of human rights produce better pedagogical outcomes in schools? 4. Are there ideological differences in implementing human rights education in developed and developing countries?

1  Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally

7

5. What is the development and impact of human rights education on nations, characterised by neo-colonialism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, oppression, violence, wars and conflicts? 6. How can we use comparative education research in promoting a more balanced and effective human rights education globally? (Adapted from Contemporary issues in human rights education 2011). In general, human rights education research globally, can be divided into three broad categories: humanistic perspective, progressivist perspective, and reconstructionist perspective. These also correspond to curriculum theorising and curriculum design models over the last five decades. Humanistic perspective in education and human rights education focuses on knowledge, the enhancement of human development, autonomy, and values. According to Aloni (2014), humanistic education is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child: humanistic education, designates a variety of educational theories and practices that are committed to the world-view and ethical code of Humanism; that is, positing the enhancement of human development, well-being, and dignity as the ultimate end of all human thought and action – beyond religious, ideological, or national ideals and values. Based on a long philosophical and moral tradition and manifested in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child (Aloni 2014).

Similarly, Veugelers (2011) presents a humanist perspective on the development of values and norms, as well as citizenship education. He shows how discourses on values have changed in the last decades and what the possibilities are for a humanist perspective on both autonomy and social involvement. He argues for a ‘critical democratic citizenship with a strong focus on meaning-making, diversity, bridging, and embedding morality development in political processes of social justice’(p. 4). Kiwan (2015) in her human rights research, like Veugelers (2011), also focuses on what it means to be a human being within the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and citizenship education. If the source of human rights is the individual’s moral nature, then individuals are guided by their moral compass. In short, human rights are value-based, hence normative. Having accepted that moral education is an essential and defining part of human beings, we can move on to the nexus between values and active citizenship education. Consequently, Kiwan (2015) argues that contemporary human rights discourses are ‘increasingly coupled’ to citizenship education. Progressivist perspective in education was developed to stress the individual and experiential learning, best captured by John Dewey and his child-centred pedagogy. Dewey focused on the child’s personal experience in learning in his book Democracy and Education (1916), which became a guide for progressivist and experiential pedagogy during the twentieth century. This was a new thinking in education, in contrast to the traditional education of the nineteenth century, which was based on preparation for the university. Learning by doing, or experiential learning, is the key principle of progressivist pedagogy. Experiential learning, as opposed to traditional

8

J. Zajda

and rote learning, denotes knowledge acquired from experience, rather than formal schooling (Dewey 1938). Experiential learning theory (ELT) defines learning as ‘the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience’ (Kolb 1984). ELT offers a pragmatic and holistic perspective of the learning process. Experiential learning can be traced to the experimental pedagogy of John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Carl Rogers, Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and others. Experiential learning is relevant to other major educational theories, ‘including: critical p­ edagogy, progressive pedagogy, empowerment-based pedagogy, and transfomational pedagogy’ (Zajda 2008). Reconstructionist perspective in education and human rights education focuses on improving people’s lives in their cultural settings. Since culture is ubiquitous in our society, with its core elements of ideology, organizations, language, values and technology, it is most relevant to human rights education. By examining the existing economic and social conditions, defining inequality, individuals become more aware of factors responsible for it, and engage in social actions to change the conditions perpetuating economic and social inequality. The Transformational Model of human rights education of Tibbitts (2008), is an excellent example of this.

 uman Rights Education and Implementation and Emerging H Issues Recent research suggests that human rights education is recognised as an essential tool for building stability in post-conflict societies (Holland 2010; Smith 2010; Unicef 2011; United Nations 2015). In some circumstances, it can also deal effectively with racism, bigotry and xenophobia (Ozdowski 2009a). However, at the same time, many human rights education questions remain unanswered. To what extent, in today’s context of globalization and fragmentation, can human rights be translated into local action? What gets lost in claims of authentic human rights? How do we introduce human rights-based approaches in fields such as health care, education, in order to reduce social inequality and combat poverty, both locally and globally? The possible answers are embedded in the politics of human rights. Human rights education is not only about principles and goals. It is also a dialogue about tools and methodologies that can be used to deliver the quality and value-added education, which reflects the values of social justice and human rights. It deals with questions of strategies and priorities. For example, should we concentrate on human rights education for legal professionals, in developing countries, or perhaps, should we give a priority to community learning or focus on primary school children. It is also about pedagogy and curriculum development that are appropriate and effective. While a number of HRE researchers have addressed the relevance of citizenship education in critiquing current trends in HER policy and pedagogical practice

1  Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally

9

(Monaghan and Spreen 2017; Ozdowski 2015; Spreen and Monaghan 2015), only a few scholars have discussed other concepts and topics, such as identity politics, ideology, social inequality, race, gender, language awareness and intercultural dialogue, which are equally relevant to the critical discourse analysis of HRE policy and pedagogy, both locally and globally (Tulasiewicz and Zajda 1998; Zajda and Freeman 2009; Zajda et  al. 2009; Zajda 2009; Tulasiewicz 2015; Zajda and Ozdowski 2017). Despite the seemingly egalitarian spirit of the reforms for human rights education, equality and social justice in education and, in view of the market forces dictating privatisation, decentralisation and marketisation in educational institutions, ambivalent legacies of the past, and unresolved critical education and policy issues, pertaining to social justice, continue, by and large, to remain the same, and are still on the policy agenda (Zajda 2015). There is a need to consider issues in human rights and social justice with reference to all citizens globally, including indigenous people. According to the UNICEF data, there are an estimated 300 million indigenous people worldwide, roughly 5% of the world’s population. Despite this significant presence, national schooling systems have ‘ignored, minimized, or ridiculed their histories pre- and post-Western contact, as well as their cultural contributions toward social and environmental sustainability’ (Arenas et al. 2009). Some researchers have argued that human rights and social justice are difficult to achieve in a society where social inequality debate is dormant. The difficulty of attaining social justice in the global economy was explained by Rikowski (2000), who argued that sustainable social justice is impossible on the basis of social stratification globally. The challenge we face today is one of addressing equity and fairness in the global community. The full promotion of economic, social and cultural rights will demand a deep political, social and cultural change in many nations globally (Zajda 2018). The future will depend as well on our ability to make human rights education relevant beyond the spheres of law, political institutions, or international relations. Human rights education must be explored and understood by all active citizens, irrespective of ideology, race, ethnicity, gender, or religion. The effects of globalisation compel us to address issues of economic and social equity, the rule of law and meaningful participation in real and authentic decision-making. In the re-­envisioning of the human rights education, as a social action platform for social justice, peace and tolerance, we need to re-examine: • current evidence concerning the nexus between social justice, cultural transferability and human rights • competing and contested democracy models • language issues in cross-cultural research, intercultural dialogue and education • issues of race and ethnicity in the discourses surrounding regional and global cultures • the unresolved tensions between religion, politics, and values education • gender research in the global culture • citizenship education and life-long learning

10

J. Zajda

• globalisation, economic and social change and the implications for equity, access and democracy. As above demonstrates, in order to address inequality of access to quality education for all, and participatory democracy, we need for more human rights education at every level – beginning with teaching human rights to children. A strong emphasis on human rights, inclusivity and the values of social and economic justice in the classroom will ensure that children have a meaningful and well-grounded approach to their own rights and responsibilities, as they mature into adulthood. Both families and schools are powerful shapers and agencies of socialisation and the best places to begin nurturing and teaching an understanding of cultural diversity, human rights and democracy. We need to make human rights education our top priority, if we are to preserve our democracy and our rights as autonomous and active citizens in an authentic democratic state.

Conclusion Effective human rights education has the potential to create a more equitable, just, tolerant, peaceful society for everyone for all in the global culture. But it will remain a mere hollow policy rhetoric, or ‘magic words’, unless we debate more vigorously social, cultural and economic inequality in the global culture, within the legal framework of human rights education, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Millennium Development Goals Report. We need to critique the existing status quo of stratified societies and nations, neoliberal politico-economic imperatives, and forces of globalisation, which have affected all levels of society, reinforcing cultural and economic social stratification. This has serious implications for a genuine and empowering human rights education and social justice in the future. Human rights education will need to become an integral part of progressive and critical pedagogies for social justice and pluralist democracy.

References Aloni, N. (2014). Humanistic education. In M.  Peters, T.  Besley, A.  Gibbons, B. Žarnić, & P. Ghiraldelli (Eds.), The encyclopaedia of educational philosophy and theory. Retrieved from: http://eepat.net/doku.php?id=humanistic_education Arenas, A., Reyes, I., & Wyman, L. (2009). When indigenous and modern education collide. In J.  Zajda (Ed.), Race, ethnicity and gender in education: Cross-cultural understandings (pp. 59–84). Dordrecht: Springer. Contemporary issues in human rights education. (2011). Paris: Unesco. Retrieved from: http:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002108/210895e.pdf Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.

1  Current Research on Human Rights Education Globally

11

Dill, J. S. (2013). The longings and limits of global citizenship education: The moral pedagogy of schooling in a cosmopolitan age (Vol. 109). London: Routledge. Holland, T. (2010). Human rights education in peace-building: A look at where the practice has come from, and where it needs to head. New York: Vassar College. Retrieved from: http://www. du.edu/korbel/hrhw/workingpapers/2010/62-holland-2010.pdf Kiwan, D. (2015). Human rights and citizenship education. Oxford: Routledge. The Millennium Development Goals Report. (2015). New York: United Nations. Retrieved from: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20 (July%201).pdf Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. MacNaughton, G., & Koutsioumpas, K. (2017). Universal human rights education in the Post-­ 2015 development agenda Gillian. In J. Zajda & S. Ozdowski (Eds.), Globalisation and human rights education. Dordrecht: Springer. Milanovic, B. (2012). Global income inequality by the numbers: in History and now an overview. World Bank. Retrieved from: http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/book/10.1596/1813-9450-6259 Milanovic, B. (2013). The winners and losers of globalization: Finding a path to shared prosperity. Seminar presented on October 25, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/ feature/2013/10/25/The-Winners-and-Losers-of-Globalization-Finding-a-Path-to-SharedProsperity Milanovic, B. (2016). Global inequality: A new approach for the age of globalization. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Monaghan, C., & Spreen, C.  A. (2017). From human rights to global citizenship education: Movement, migration, conflict and capitalism in the classroom. In J. Zajda (Ed.), Globalisation and human rights education. Dordrecht: Springer. OECD. (2009). Education at a glance. OECD indicators. Paris: OECD. Ozdowski, S. (2005). Human rights: A report card for Australia. Political Crossroads, 12(3), 1–88. Ozdowski, S. (2009a). Human rights and the Beijing Olympics. Political Crossroads, 16(1), 51–74. Ozdowski, S. (2009b). An absence of human rights: Children in detention. Political Crossroads, 16(2), 39–72. Ozdowski, S. (2015). Human rights education in Australia. In J. Zajda (Ed.), Second international handbook on globalisation, education and policy research (pp. 537–555). Dordrecht: Springer. Rikowski, G. (2000). Education and social justice within the social universe of capital. Paper presented at the BERA day seminar on ‘Approaching social justice in education: Theoretical frameworks for Practical purposes’, Faculty of Education, Nottingham Trent University, 10th April. Sirota, S. (2017). The role of human rights education in social movements: Case studies in South Africa and the United States. In J.  Zajda (Ed.), Globalisation and human rights education. Dordrecht: Springer. Smith, A. (2010). The influence of education on conflict and peace building. Background paper prepared for the education for all global monitoring report 2011. New York: UNESCO. Spreen, C. A., & Monaghan, C. (2015). Leveraging diversity to become a global citizen: Lessons for human rights education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, Research & Praxis. London: Routledge. Tibbitts, F. (2012). Understanding what we do: Emerging models for human rights education. Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/836925/ Understanding_what_we_do_Emerging_models_for_human_rights_education Tibbitts, F. (2008). Human rights education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Retrieved from: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/ epe/entries.html. Tulasiewicz, W., & Zajda, J. (1998). Language awareness in the school curriculum. Melbourne: James Nicholas Publishers.

12

J. Zajda

Tulasiewicz, W. (2015). The role of language awareness in promoting intercultural coexistence. In J. Zajda (Ed.), Globalisation, ideology and politics of education reforms. Dordrecht: Springer. Unicef. (2011). The role of education in peacebuilding: Literature review. New  York: United Nations Children’s Fund. Veugelers, W. (2011). Education and humanism: Linking autonomy and humanity. Rotterdam: Sense. The Human Rights Risk Atlas. (2015). Retrieved from: https://maplecroft.com/themes/hr/ Zajda, J. (2008). Experiential learning. In G.  McCulloch & D.  Crook (Eds.), The international Encyclopedia of education. London: Routledge. Zajda, J. (2009). Globalisation, nation-building, and cultural identity: The role of intercultural dialogue. In J.  Zajda, H.  Daun, & L.  Saha (Eds.), Nation-building, identity and citizenship education: Cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 15–24). Dordrecht: Springer. Zajda, J., & Freeman, K. (Eds.). (2009). Race, ethnicity and gender in education: Cross-­ cultural understandings. Dordrecht: Springer. http://www.springer.com/education/ comparative+education/book/978-1-4020-9738-6 Zajda, J., Daun, H., & Saha, L. (Eds.). (2009). Nation-building, identity and citizenship education: Cross-cultural perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Zajda, J. (2010). Globalisation and human rights education. Keynote address at the International conference on human rights Education, University of Western Sydney, 4 December, Parramatta. Zajda, J. (2015). Globalisation and its impact on education and policy. In J. Zajda (Ed.), Second international handbook of globalisation, education and policy research (pp. 1–13). Dordrecht: Springer. Zajda, J., & Ozdowski, S. (Eds.). (2017). Globalisation, human rights education and reforms. Dordrecht: Springer. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789402408706 Zajda, J. (2018). Globalisation and education reforms: Paradigms and ideologies. Dordrecht: Springer. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789402412031 Zajda, J. (Ed.). (2020). Human rights education globally. Dordrecht: Springer. Joseph Zajda (Australian Catholic University, Melbourne) is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne Campus). He specializes in globalisation and education policy reforms, social justice, history education, and values education. He has written and edited 45 books and over 120 book chapters and articles in the areas of globalisation and education policy, higher education, and curriculum reforms. Recent publications include: Zajda, J. (2018). Globalisation and education reforms: Paradigms and ideologies. Dordrecht: Springer. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789402412031; Zajda, J. (2017). Globalisation and National Identity in History Textbooks: The Russian Federation. Dordrecht: Springer; Zajda, J.  Tsyrlina-Spady, T. & Lovorn, M. (2017) (Eds.). Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders: Symbolic Representations in School Textbooks. Dordrecht: Springer; Zajda, J. & Ozdowski, S. (2017). (Eds.), Globalisation and Human Rights Education Dordrecht: Springer; Russian Revolution (2014). In G.  Ritzer & J.  M. Ryan (Eds.), The WileyBlackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization Online; Zajda, J. (2014). Values education. In D. Phillips (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. Thousand Oaks: Sage; Zajda, J. (2020). Globalisation and education reforms. In G. Ritzer (Ed.), Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (second ed). He is also the editor of the twenty-four volume book series Globalisation and Comparative Education (Springer, 2009 & 2021). He edits World Studies in Education, Curriculum and Teaching, and Education and Society for James Nicholas Publishers. His works are found in 445 publications in 4 languages and some 10,500 university library holdings globally. He was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant (with Monash University) for 2011−2015 for a comparative analysis of history national curriculum implementation in Russia and Australia ($315,000). Elected as Fellow of the Australian College of Educators (June 2013). ORCID ID https://orcid. org/0000-0003-4422-9782.  

Chapter 2

A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education Yvonne Vissing

Abstract  The United Nation created the World Programme for Human Rights Education to advance implementation of human rights education (HRE). This study is an exploration of some aspects of the Second Phase of the Programme as it pertains to the incorporation of human rights education into higher education settings. It concludes that there is a global attempt to integrate HRE into higher education, particularly at the course level in medical, legal, and political departments. Content and pedagogical approaches vary significantly. The role of higher education in stimulating HRE research is under-developed. Higher education has a powerful opportunity to do much more to integrate and advance HRE in the future. Keywords  Assessment of human rights courses · Child rights · Culture · Curriculum · Human rights education · Higher education · Ideology · Law

Rights education is a mandate of almost every United Nations human rights treaty. Human rights education (HRE) is regarded as essential for programs strengthening rights through the support of democracy, human dignity, civil society, development, equality and non-violence. The success of HRE depends on the teaching profession’s ability to have professors who have gained both HRE knowledge and skills who impart them to students, who transmit them to their students of all ages in their communities. HRE’s efficacy thus hinges upon higher education’s ability to structure HRE into their institutions and empower HRE professors in all fields of study (Bratt et al. 2009). Higher education’s role in the establishment of human rights is clearly stated. On 10 December 2004, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the World Programme for Human Rights Education to advance the implementation of human rights education programmes in all sectors. The World Y. Vissing (*) Sociology Department, Salem State University, Salem, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 J. Zajda (ed.), Human Rights Education Globally, Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1913-9_2

13

14

Y. Vissing

Programme for HRE was established by the General Assembly’s resolution 59/113 and is overseen by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights to provide global coordination of the World Programme’s impact. Its first phase (2005–2009) focused on human rights education in primary and secondary school systems. The second phase (2010–2014) focused on human rights education for higher education and on human rights training programmes for teachers and educators, and professionals such as civil servants, law enforcement officials and military personnel. The third phase (2015–2019) focuses on strengthening the implementation of the first two phases and promoting human rights training for media professionals and journalists (United Nations 2018). A recognition that human rights education can be a positive agent for social change is inherent in the World Programme’s education plan. Programme members came from diverse nations and orientations, including Slovenia, Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, European Union, Dominican Republic on behalf of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Morocco on behalf of the Francophone Group, Timor-Leste on behalf of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Australia, Switzerland, Greece, Indonesia, Council of Europe, Poland, Qatar, Ecuador, Argentina, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, Viet Nam, Russia, Botswana, Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, Paraguay and South Africa. These leaders acknowledge that while the world is full of enormous opportunities, interconnectedness and innovations, many individuals and groups are left behind, human rights are constantly violated, and preventable conflicts exist. They expressed concern over terrorism and radical extremism and agree that the determining factor in choosing violence is the lack of education in the area of human rights. They have found the best response to radicalization and violent extremism is HRE and student’s learning tolerance. In order to facilitate the power of human rights education to be an effective change agent against violence and oppression, they recommend that states should adopt domestic legislation and develop national policies which integrate systemic and comprehensive programmes on HRE in all educational sections, to conduct systematic monitoring, and review national policies and practices in that domain. The panel found that without question, HRE is needed more than ever. Phase two of the international HRE program requires that effective integration of rights occur in five areas of higher education. These include: (1) Policy and implementation measures, including legislation, plans of action, curricula and training policies that infuse human rights throughout the higher education system to fulfill a country’s international obligation to provide and promote the right to quality education and honor rights to which individuals are entitled; (2) Teaching that infuses human rights as a cross-cutting issue into all disciplines, courses and programmes, using practices that are democratic and participatory with materials that promote rights-respecting values; (3) Conducting research that will allow higher education institutions to develop new knowledge and advance critical reflection in the area of human rights, which in turn inform policies and practices in human rights and in human rights education; (4) Creating learning environments that promote the daily practice of human rights by fostering mutual understanding, respect and

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

15

r­esponsibility and (5) Ensuring that in order for higher education institutions to serve as a model of human rights learning and practice, all teaching personnel and other staff need to learn, transmit, and model human rights values. These require allocation of adequate resources and the setting-up of coordination mechanisms to ensure coherence, monitoring and accountability. This chapter explores how successfully Phase 2 has been implemented. It identifies trends, gaps and challenges in higher education HRE. It will explore several different data sets that we have combined from existing reports and documents. While it is by no means a comprehensive analysis of Phase 2, the following data provide a window into the current relationship between HRE and higher education, with a particular focus on the United States.

HRE Is Mandated by Human Rights Treaties Rights education is required by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in Article 26(2) to strengthen respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, promote understanding, tolerance and friendships among all nations and people in pursuit of maintaining peace. The UN International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Article 13 (1) asserts that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality, sense of dignity and strengthen respect for human rights. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (Article 28, 29 and 42) requires rights education for all ratifying nations in order to ensure the understanding and protection of rights for world’s youngest citizens. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action alleges HRE is essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace (2006). The United Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education promotes a common understanding of basic principles and methodologies of rights education, provides a concrete framework for action, and seeks to strengthen partnerships from the international level to local levels. The UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1994–2005) and the World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005-ongoing) provide a framework for HRE implementation.

What is HRE? A HRE framework is based upon basic standards for treatment of all people everywhere, irrespective of their unique demographic or cultural features, that unite the core of United Nations’ set of human rights treaties. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provides the most utilized definition of human rights education. It describes HRE as training, dissemination and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights

16

Y. Vissing

through the imparting of knowledge and skills and the molding of attitudes directed to: (a) the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; (b) the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity; (c) the promotion of understanding, tolerance, gender equality and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples and racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups; and, (d) the enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free society (Tibbets and Kirschschlager 2010). The Human Rights Resource Library at the University of Minnesota (nd) asserts that effective HRE can produce changes in values, attitude, and behavior and encourage participatory behavior, social justice as people develop knowledge and analytical skills. While they acknowledge that evaluation methodologies for documenting the effectiveness of HRE are still in the developmental stage and tend to be largely anecdotal, including observations and small study data, evidence to date indicates positive outcomes, such as increase of rights knowledge, greater respect and tolerance of others, and reduction of inappropriate physical, social and verbal misbehaviors. HRE is a difficult field to precisely define or measure because of the multiplicity of HRE topics, quality, and quantity (Flowers 2007). In many ways, HRE has become a basket in which all kinds of citizenship, democracy, global education or human relations topics have been thrown. It appears to be quite varied in content, pedagogy, and methodology. It is precisely because of its diversity and lack of a tight definition that HRE has become challenging to implement and measure.

Importance of HRE in Higher Education Education plays a catalytic role in changing the future. Rights education has the power to change consciousness in the way we think and act. The rise of terrorism nationalism, violence and intolerance is concerning (Ulansky and Witenberg 2017). Higher education has the opportunity to teach students how to become critical thinkers and see the benefits of human rights. Education’s role in protecting democracy and fighting oppressive movements needs to be enhanced, not abandoned (Giroux 2018). Educators have tremendous power to influence economic, political and ethical conditions that endow both young people and the general public with capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable, inspire and energize the citizens for the existence of a robust democracy. Human rights as a concept is often seen as controversial within many segments of society thus the implementation of HRE has not been universally embraced (Campbell 1999). Critics of HRE regard it as a controversial because it seeks to transform society and challenge the continued empowerment of the status quo (Struthers 2016). Work by Mezirow (2009), Giroux and Kostas (2001) and Freire (1968) advocate for a critical pedagogical approach that inspires students to evaluate situations and judge whether they are rights-respecting or oppressive. Ultimately, exposure to human rights could lead to what Meintjes (1997) identifies as a critical human rights consciousness. This would empower students to recognize the human

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

17

rights dimensions in conflicts, to become aware of their role in rights-protection or exploitation, and the selection of actions that are more rights-respecting. The political context surrounding what human rights are and what HRE consists require that educators figure out what kind of language is necessary for society as a whole and higher education in particular as it addresses its mission to create an inspired intellect within the public sphere (Giroux 2018). Human rights education doesn’t occur just in schools  – it must become an embedded part of the social society, promoted by institutions, protected law and supported by adults. There must be both a top-down government-inspired approach to rights education as well as a bottom-up approach that ensures people on the street have the tools and knowledge to talk about human rights in a proper manner and to behave in rights-respecting ways. Rights education is more than learning concepts; in order to avoid oppression and violent radicalization, this requires rights-respecting face-to-­face interactions at all levels of society (UN 2016). Human rights education has not been adequately instituted into teacher training programs in the United States (Gaudelli and Ferneke 2004). This is problematic if teachers are designed to be the purveyors of rights education instruction to younger generations. Essentially, teachers can’t teach what they don’t know. They cannot be expected to be aware of human rights education, information or resources if they were never taught about it. They cannot be expected to have a keen rights-pedagogical approach or understanding of rights-education best practices if they were never taught them (Vissing and Williams 2018). Therefore, it is of utmost importance for higher education to train teachers about how to teach human rights. It is also necessary for professionals to learn how to embed a rights-respecting approach to their work, irrespective of the type of work one does.

Global Support for HRE Training The implementation of Phase 1 seems to be fairly universal, with the exception of the United States, which has not ratified the CRC and many other treaties, and has withdrawn from its role on the UN Human Rights Council (Anapol 2018). Globally there exists clear support for supporting Phase 2 of the World Programme HRE efforts. The European Wergeland Centre (2017) in Norway has posted for public consumption a manual by Wolfgang Benedick and the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy on Human Rights Education, Understanding Human Rights, which was developed in 2003 by the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Graz, Austria. This manual is designed to be a practical capacity-building “training tool” of HRE modules which can be varied and adapted by their users according to different contexts and training situations. It is available in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, German, Albanian, Croatian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Serbian, Thai and Vietnamese. It contains a selected collection of vetted and theory sensitized modules on specific rights-training issues that incorporate readings,

18

Y. Vissing

p­ ractice, skills-building and attitude-shaping components. The issues address the main goal looking for common ground and a shared human rights perspective from culture-­sensitive viewpoint. When governments create laws and policies that support HRE, rights become a part of the social fabric that binds people together. For instance, the National Human Rights Council of Morocco instituted a National Institute for Human Rights Education with a goal to develop education in different human rights areas, ensure education for trainers, to initiate and contribute to the evaluation of the existing education at the national level, implement modules of education which would continue to benefit various institutional and private actors, and support expertise in relevant fields. Working with UNESCO they developed a national guidebook for the education of youth with a focus on citizenship and human rights as they try to institutionalize human rights education. The Australian Human Rights Commission, is promoting rights-based education and training to build a human rights culture across the nation. Argentina is developing education and training in human rights to promote greater tolerance and inclusion for its citizens. South Africa recognizes the role of human rights education in the promotion of dignity and is using rights education to provide people with tools to develop a sense of responsibility to defend their own rights and those of others. Slovenia launched a HRE programme which has been translated into 23 languages. The UN film, A Path to Dignity, asserts that HRE must be led by governments, who have the power to state what a nation believes and advocates for. Governments have the legal framework to set forth implementation and monitoring of human rights. UNICEF (2014) developed a Child Rights Education Toolkit to assist teachers in providing materials that both teach about the CRC as well as skills to encourage a student-participatory approach to education at the family, school, community, national and global levels. The aim of the toolkit is to assist practitioners and decision-­makers in rooting the provisions and principles of the CRC and the child rights approach into early childhood education, primary and secondary schools. The toolkit is free and teaches how every article in the CRC concern six umbrella rights, including nondiscrimination (Article 2), best-interests of the child (Article 3.1), implementation (Article 4), guidance by families and communities to help them exercise their rights in line with their evolving capacities (Article 5), right to life, survival and development (Article 6) and participation (Article 12). The toolkit explains why the process of achieving rights is just as important as the outcome. The International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD) (2018) advocates for child rights education within a contextualized, evidence-informed, developmental approach that incorporates child development community engagement, and viewing children within the broader context of international development since they are impact by, and able to impact, global change. Their approach can be seen through the use of the tree diagram in Fig. 2.1 that explores different and complimentary aspects of rights education, for which they have created a variety of materials that can be obtained through their website. The Council of Europe developed a framework for teachers to develop fifteen competencies in HRE. They organized them by clusters, including one on EDC/HRE

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

19

Fig. 2.1  IICRD HRE approach

knowledge and understanding, one on teaching and learning activities that develop EDC/HRE in the classroom and school, another cluster on teaching and learning activities that develop EDC/HRE through partnerships and community involvement, and one on implementing and evaluating participatory EDC/HRE approaches. From a pedagogical approach, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence at the University of California recommend actions essential to successful instruction (Teaching Tolerance 2018). These include: (1) Joint Teaching Action. Learning occurs most effectively when experts and novices work together for a common product or goal and incorporates “mentoring” and “learning in action”; (2) Language Literacy. Knowledge and thinking are inseparable from language and are critical for school success through informal interactions, problem-­ solving, and discourse; (3) Teaching Complex Thinking Skills Through Challenging

20

Y. Vissing

Activities. Working with a cognitively challenging curriculum requires careful leveling of tasks so students are motivated to stretch; (4) Instructional Conversation. Instructional Conversation forces professors to assess student interest, understandings, needs, and adjust learning responses to assist student efforts in learning so classrooms are transformed into communities of learners.

Researching HRE Mandate The World Programme for Human Rights Education makes research a top priority. In point C of their report, they state “The role of higher education in developing new knowledge and advancing critical reflection in the area of human rights is fundamental. Higher education should inform, by means of research, human rights education policies and practice, through inter alia the following strategies: (a) Encouraging and investing in research contributing to the development of innovative and effective methodologies and tools for human rights education based also on the analysis and assessment of existing practices, lesson-learning and evaluation exercises, and widely disseminate research results; (b) Encouraging and investing in research on ways of translating human rights principles and specific human rights instruments into concrete forms (e.g. government policy and programmes, business practices, community initiatives, socio-cultural norms) as a general research agenda; (c) Assessing, collecting and disseminating examples of good practices in human rights education at the higher education and other levels; (d) Establishing links, partnerships and networks to facilitate collaboration and information exchanges between researchers of different higher education institutions, non-governmental and other civil society organizations, national human rights institutions and international organizations, and the collaborative development of human rights education research projects; (e) Establishing and developing human rights resource centres and libraries which play a capacity-building role, providing facilities for human rights studies and research and ascertain how these can be better supported; (f) Encouraging scholarships and fellowships as a means to promote human-rights related research; (g) Participating in international surveys and comparative studies”. Most research on HRE that has been done to date is descriptive, rather than inferential. There is value in describing what programs are doing in HRE and reflects the infancy of the field. For instance, in a single year (2017), the EWC trained 6600 educators who in turn reached 65,000 pupils, students, teachers, parents, school heads, community actors and other stakeholders and created 27 new study programmes in education institutions. They designed research tools that they use to conduct research. They focus on capacity-building of institutions such as primary and secondary schools as well as higher education universities and teachertraining institutions. They also aid teachers who work in informal education likes NGOs, museums, and other venues. They aim for all institutions to develop and offer quality programs and activities in Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE) as well as to strengthen institutional capacity,

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

21

p­ractices, governance and professional development (European Training and Research Center for Human Rights and Democracy 2018). In a review of 26 adult-focused HRE programs, they found that programs need to more consistently deliver HRE methodologies that are agreed-upon as essential to human rights training. They also found that there needs to be more documentation of what is provided as HRE and for longitudinal research on HRE impact to be used as a research strategy (Flowers 2007). Jerome et al. conducted research on 26 countries that had ratified the CRC to determine their degree of implementation of rights education. The found that in the 26 countries studied, there was only a curriculum entitlement to learn about children’s rights in 11 countries; in 15 countries there was no national curriculum entitlement for all children to learn about children’s rights, and no evidence that governments use legislation to ensure that schools teach about children’s rights. It was common when rights were discussed for rights to be linked to responsibilities but not always to the CRC’s focus of what it means to be a rights-holder or duty- approach. In the absence of such clarity children may learn that rights are directly dependent on individuals fulfilling specific responsibilities, rather than being universal entitlements on the basis of being young. Lundy et al. (2013)‘s previous research in six of the countries studied concluded that children’s rights are better protected – at least in law if not also in practice – in countries that have given legal status to the CRC in a systematic way and have followed this up by establishing the necessary systems to support, monitor and enforce the implementation of CRC rights. While these types of descriptive analyses are enlightening, inferential HRE analyses have not been frequently utilized. Such approaches would be useful to determine the relationship between different pedagogical approaches and bestpractices outcomes. This was shown in an exploratory study that we conducted to identify how research was being utilized in HRE publications. We selected a sample of 30 HRE studies that employed a primary research emphasis. We relied upon Google searches using key words such as research on child/human rights education to locate appropriate sources for our analysis. Millions of hits were obtained but only a small number pertained to primary research being conducted on child and human rights education effectiveness. The studies selected represent HRE research from around the world and include Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. An attempt was made to include representation from both urban and rural areas. In Table  2.1, data was organized by author, the research methodology employed, main findings, and a link where that research report can be found. Of the 30 research articles analysed, six had a decidedly international focus, six pertained to HRE in Africa, seven addressed HRE issues in North America, seven in the UK and EU, three in the Middle East, and one in Asia. All of the reports incorporated literature reviews, with five relying on them as the main source of data. Almost three-quarters (N = 22) used either surveys or mixed-method designs; two were opinion reports and one was based solely upon interviews. Most studies relied upon information from teachers to base their views of HRE effectiveness. Some included student input, reflecting a youth-agency respecting approach. Research ethics protocols make it easier to gain information from teachers. Three of the

Banks

Method

3 scale questionnaire, of 15 public secondary schools in Nigeria in both urban and rural locations. Students and teachers were given survey. 150 student respondents and 75 teacher respondents A survey was developed through consultation with national HR educators. April 2000, surveys were mailed to a select sample of 120 knowledgeable persons (state education curriculum specialists and officers of state councils for the social studies), to respond to questions about level of inclusion of HRE topics within their state policies. Data obtained from all 50 states

Author

Anthony

http://hrusa.org/education/ The survey was conducted to determine the degree to which HRE has been integrated into PromisestoKeep.htm US statewide mandates, standards, and/or frameworks for K-12 instruction. In response to the questions about mandates and/or standards, 40% (20) of the states indicate that human rights education is within the state mandated curriculum. States with the most comprehensive HRE curricula include Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, and Vermont. Nine states consider their mandate to be only a guideline or suggestion, leaving it up to the individual districts to choose whether to implement. When asked to specify curriculum topics within HRE, the most frequently cited were the Holocaust, Irish Famine, genocide, slavery, and current issues. In many states, however, the issues are not specifically delineated. Half of the states indicated that the human rights mandate is reflected in their statewide assessment structure. Several others indicated that no such test exists, but is "under construction" and the resulting product will include human rights

Link https://nau.edu/uploadedFiles/ Academic/COE/Folder_Templates/ Students'%20and%20Human%20 Rights%20Awareness%20in%20 Secondary%20Schools'%20 Environment%20State.pdf

Major findings

This study focused on human rights relevance to human society in general and the school system in particular. Only 17% of students had seen the 1999 Nigeria constitution. 53% of teachers had seen it. 33% of students agreed that they are aware of the human rights in constitution. 93% of teachers were aware of rights. 93% of students support the basis of children rights while only 40% of teachers do. Overall, most secondary students are not aware of the rights given to them in Nigeria’s constitution

Table 2.1  Articles utilizing HRE research strategies

Covell, Howe and McNeil

Method

Surveys were distributed by local Scottish authorities online and in hard copy form to primary & secondary school teachers. 6 localities in both urban and rural areas were selected to make data more diverse. A mixed methods approach was used. 10 questions with open and closed ended. Items assessed teacher HRE knowledge, experience, attitudes toward HRE, & perceived barriers of HRE. Participants were asked for a follow up semi-structured interviews on most effective means for delivering HRE in classrooms. 351 responses Researchers studied RRR in 18 schools in England (infant, primary and junior) for 3 years – only complete data for 13 school. Data collected 2006–2008. through interviews and surveys with teachers and admin on RRR training, resources, support, challenges, etc. Surveys given to teachers looked at attitudes on teachers responsibility

Author

BEMIS

Implementing Children's Human Rights Education in Schools. Improving Schools, 13(2), 117–132. 2010

Researchers studied the Hampshire Education Authority’s Rights, Respect and Responsibility (RRR) initiative in England. This is a model for children’s rights education in schools. RRR is implemented in the whole school – across classrooms, across grade levels, across curricula, and across school practices. The basic aim of the RRR initiative is to build rights-respecting schools based on a values framework and practices consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Study found that the schools who were most successful in fully implementing RRR were led by teachers who had been trained in RRR and felt fully supported and committed to reform. Also found a contagion effect outside of school of children being empowered to create right respecting communities which they lived

(continued)

Link http://www.bemis.org.uk/documents/ BEMIS%20HRE%20in%20 Schools%20Report.pdf

Major findings

This study looked at effectiveness and implementation of HRE in schools in Scotland. 50% of teachers felt fairly confident in teaching HRE, while 46% did not. A number of teachers who reported that they were Not Confident or Fairly Confident in the teaching of HRE expressed a desire to improve their knowledge and teaching ability in this area. 60% of teachers reported incorporating HRE in their teaching context. But few of them responded or gave examples when asked to share their good HRE techniques. Barriers to HRE was lack of training, lack of time and lack of resources

Method

Danish Institute 445 respondents- questionnaireteachers of primary and for Human secondary schools in Denmark Rights

Author

Table 2.1 (continued) Link https://www.humanrights.dk/files/ media/dokumenter/udgivelser/ mapping_of_hre_in_danish_schools. pdf

Major findings

Study found that human rights are not incorporated adequately in the official curriculum at schools and teacher university colleges and teachers have insufficient frameworks and tools for creating quality HRE. 87% of teachers respond that their teacher education did not motivate them to teach pupils about human rights. The UN World Programme recommends that States prepare national action plans to strengthen human rights in the educational sector. The UN World Programme points out 5 key areas that are recommended to be included in the member states’ national action plans for human rights education: 1. Educational policy, 2. Support for implementation of educational policy, 3. Learning environment, 4. Education and learning processes, and 5. Education and continuing education of staff at the educational institutions. Greater cohesion between the curricula of primary and lower secondary schools and teacher university colleges is needed. When human rights are addressed ‘spontaneously’ or as a ‘dimension’ of another topic, the result is ‘indirect’ or ‘implicit’ human rights education. In other words, teachers report that human rights form the basis for and are included in many of the discussions that arise in class, but often without the teacher explicitly mentioning ‘human rights’ or ‘rights’. 76% of teachers state that they largely disagree that human rights are so universal that they do not need to be given special attention

Method

Mixed methods- A questionnaire was administered to 460 final year high school students in Bahrain (53.3% females and 46.7% males) with a mean age of 18. Followed by in-depth interviews with a stratified sample of 22 students. The students came from socioeconomic backgrounds reflective of the social structure of the country

Author

Eid

Major findings

Link

(continued)

Paper looks at whether young people graduating from high school in Bahrain are equipped https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ with the civic knowledge and understanding necessary to participate effectively in society. EJ1106768.pdf In Bahrain, research studies revealed deficiencies in civic preparedness of young people. All the young people who were interviewed agreed that ‘all citizens should have rights’. Young people pointed out that citizens should have rights because ‘they belong to this land’ and ‘citizens deserve to have rights because they have given all what they can to the country and have served it’. Some young people mentioned other rights citizens in a democratic society should have. For example, they believed that citizens in a democracy should have the right of freedom, to be allowed to express opinions and to live a decent and safe life. A large proportion of young people pointed out that they had rights at home as well. They said they have the right to freedom, to be loved and respected, to feel equal with other members of their family, and to enjoy their life. Respondents mentioned they needed a suitable milieu for living. Some stated ‘at home, I have the right to have a suitable environment to study in my own room, to access the Internet and a telephone’. Almost all the young people indicated that they had rights at school. Their rights at school were classified into two parts: having good education and having a healthy school environment. They indicated that Bahraini citizens should: enjoy freedom of expression, practice their rights, perform their responsibilities, participate in decision-making, accept others’ opinions, and govern themselves. rural young females were more likely to report that citizens should perform their responsibilities in a democracy. Urban young females were less likely to see the importance of participation in a democratic society compared with the rural males, the rural females and the urban males. The majority of young people mentioned that ‘the government’ should protect their rights ‘officially, the ministries should protect my rights such as the Ministry of Interior which should provide security or the Ministry of Housing which should offer houses’. Participants thought it was not only the responsibility of the government to create a better society, but also the responsibility of individual citizens. The majority of young people believed that laws were needed to protect people’s rights, organize the relationship between people and society, determine people’s responsibilities, and to practice democracy

Action HRE research format, mixed methods. 14 survey questions asked of 91 high school students to assess movement from a national to global understanding of HRE in 2000–2003. Interviews with teachers before and after the teaching unit to assess their observations of student learning

Gaudelli & Fernekes

https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/254350960_Teaching_ about_Global_Human_Rights_for_ Global_Citizenship

Link https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED544250.pdf

Major findings

52% of teachers reported that HRE in their school are in both curriculum and extracurriculum activities. 26% reported it occurred solely through curriculum. Elementary teachers were 2x more likely as secondary school teachers to report that HRE does not occur in their school. 90% agreed that teachers value HRE. 77% agreed that students value HRE. 48% reported sufficient resources in their school to support HRE. Most important resource reported was access to speaker to best teach through voice of experience. Other needed resources reported include time, online resources, community partners, teacher training, & funding. Respondents talked about need to build inclusive schools and classrooms as an important aspect of HRE. Many reported success in raising HR student awareness through classroom discussion and debate. Heightened awareness about human rights can translate into changed attitudes and values as well as student engagement. Challenges reported- time stress and workload, lack of information and resources. One respondent noted that human rights education “is such a broad and complex issue – where does a teacher begin? It needs to be addressed at all grade levels.” Some respondents commented on the challenges they face teaching controversial issues and topics related to human rights education in public schools in the context of a pluralistic society. Some cited a lack of professional development and training in the area of HRE. Respondents expressed the need for parents and other community members to place more value on HRE, and to take more responsibility for raising children’s awareness about human rights issues. Students had a favorable view of being exposed to information in a HRE unit. They were previously unfamiliar with most HRE concepts prior to the unit. The longitudinal impact of HRE is unknown due to the methodology. The degree to which students can apply concepts to real life situations can be challenging, which is why an application of the concepts to global situations may be beneficial. Student ability to generalize human rights contextualization to different situations is challenging. It has the possibility of promoting counter-socialization, which is important for critical thinking and democratic political freedom. Teachers would benefit from initial HRE training and ongoing service training and supporting in the field so they can better help students to incorporate a human rights world view

Method

Online survey of 2600 Canadian teachers in Feb 2013 from 8 out of the 10 provinces to obtain perspectives on HRE in Canadian schools

Author

FroeseGermain, Rieh & Theoret

Table 2.1 (continued)

Major findings

Argued that infusing HRE into bullying prevention efforts can help reduce barriers to effective implementation of such efforts. It helps to address bias-based bullying. It does this by demonstrating that bullying is a violation of human rights, according to UDHR and right to education. This framework helps to target behaviors that can harm children. Most effective when all players (teachers, admin, students, etc) are on board with approach. If bullying is seen as a human rights violation as it interferes with rights of education, then it will motivate schools to develop effective bullying prevention programs Gundogdu Teacher survey in Turkey using Paper argued that teachers’ understandings of democracy and human rights greatly influence how children will learn about democracy in schools. Colleges are critically important in the Human Rights Education initiating human rights efforts. Found gender difference - female candidate teachers favor Attitude Scale developed by human rights education more highly. Location played a role in the participant perceptions as Karaman-Kepenekçi (1999). the trend was that those from the universities located in the Southeastern and Mediterranean 1904 candidate teachers within 13 universities in the 2009–2010 regions favored human rights education more. Participants studying to be teachers in the field academic year. 53% were female of social sciences reported more favorably for HRE. Participants top 5 ranked items on the scale include in order, “I think teachers should be respectful to the rights of all students”, “I believe that students should be listened to in the classrooms”, “I believe that students should be respected even if they think in a different way”, “I believe that schools and classrooms should be democratic”, “I believe that students should directly participate in the university administration or through representatives.” Human Rights Opinion Human rights education is essential to active citizenship in a democratic and pluralistic civil Educators USA society. Citizens need to be able to think critically, make moral choices, take principled positions on issues, and devise democratic courses of action. Only people who understand human rights will work to secure and defend them for themselves and others. The better informed activists are, the more effective their activism. Human rights education intersects with and reinforces many other forms of education, including peace education, global education, law-related education, development education, environmental education, and moral or values education. participatory methods for learning such as role plays, discussion, debates, mock trials, games, and simulations. Learners should be encouraged to engage in an open-minded examination of human rights concerns and critically reflect on their environment with opportunities to draw their own conclusions and envision their choices in presented situations.

Method

Opinion

Author

Greene

Link

(continued)

https://hreusa.org/hre-library/topics/ human-rights-education/background

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.836.7862&rep =rep1&type=pdf

Bullying in schools: A plea for a measure of human rights. Journal of Social Issues.62(1), 63–79. 2006

Method

Mixed methods- survey consisted of 5 multiple choice questions and 2 short answer. Survey was student-originated survey. How survey was administered was not discussed. Approx. 2900 respondents from students grade 9–12 in 10 public and private high schools in LA area through March-June 2011. 2381 from public school and 503 from private. 725 Freshmen, 822 Sophomores, 855 Juniors, 459 Seniors, and 23 teachers participated

Author

Human Rights Watch

Table 2.1 (continued)

Major findings

Link

Goal of survey was to see prevalence or absence of HRE within HS curricula and activities. http://www.hrwstf.org/hreportal/ docs/hrwstf_2011hre_survey_web. Also looked at most effective mechanisms in implementing HRE. 31% of students could pdf not correctly identify what human rights were. 90% of students could not define what human dignity is. 73% of students reported learning about something about human rights in school but 71% of students had not heard of the UDHR. 1786 participants reported learning human rights in history class. Students wanted to learn more about rights. Some learned about human rights in clubs like student government. Based on short answers, students were either most familiar with or interested in the right to vote, speak, or marry and freedom of religion and would be interested in learning how those rights affect their daily lives. Survey results suggest approaching HRE in through alternative education styles might be more effective

Link

(continued)

Major findings

https://www.unicef.org/crc/files/ Lit review found CRE has a positive impact on promoting children’s engagement, positive school environment, enhanced citizenship values, teacher motivation, shared language with CHILD_RIGHTS_EDUCATION_ STUDY_11May.pdf teachers and students, empowerment to respect rights, and positive attitudes toward diversity. Focused on HRE values, accountability model, & transformational models. Issues with HRE- getting policy alignment to support CRE from government down to schools and need to address teacher knowledge and attitudes. Survey results- 11 of 26 states ensured entitlement to CRE to children, 5 had some entitlement and 8 did not have CRE curriculum. Identified challenges: 54% reported lack of teacher knowledge and training, 38% policy commitment, 36% said a need for participation and for CRE to go beyond learning about rights, 26% said inadequate curriculum and 19% cited lack of political leadership. Reported needs for improvements- 59% teacher HRE education, 29% said clear policy commitment, 26% said shift in culture of schools and the education system to recognize children’s rights, 20% said resources, 19% said a place in curriculum, and 18% said political leadership. 42% said HRE was required by law and 47% said it was not. 12% said it was fully implemented into schools but 42% said it was only to some extent. 69% said teachers were not required to be trained in CRE & 48% said teachers were not required to be trained in HRE. Types of resources provided in countries included: websites (71%), worksheets and posters (65%), textbooks (58%) and other funded projects (29%). When asked about access to quality teaching resources, 35% said to some extents, 26% said significant extent while 28% to limited extent. CRC topics included international aid and development (58%), poverty and social class (49%), race and ethnicity (47%), disability (42%), sex education (33%), gender (33%), drugs education (28%) and religious education (22%). In the majority of the 26 countries there is no entitlement in the official curriculum for all children to learn about children’s rights. When there is a curriculum entitlement, it is common for rights in the curriculum to be linked to responsibilities, and not always to the UNCRC. This raises the possibility that even where children learn about rights they may not learn about the CRC, nor about what it means to be a rights-holder or duty-bearer. Recent curriculum reforms demonstrate a varied approach to embedding CRE: whilst some countries have secured a substantial commitment to CRE as an entitlement for all, others have failed to ensure progress or have regressed. As an example of progress, Iceland’s curriculum now specifies Human Rights and Democracy as one of six foundational principles and includes familiarity with the CRC as a specified learning outcome in primary schools. As an example of the failure to build CRE into reforms, Australia is in the process of moving towards a national curricular framework but has omitted CRE. identified teacher training as the most important area for action. Report stresses the importance of networks, partnerships and collaborations

Method

Mixed methods study. Online survey given to 88 experts across 26 countries, identified by UNICEF national committee. Questions were based off of themes found in extensive lit review. Questions focused on CRC policy & implementation. Also performed document analysis to overview child rights education (CRE) in each country

Author

Jerome, Emerson, Lundy & Orr

Kingston

Qualitative- 71 teachers from primary schools in Ankara, Turkey. These teachers taught the HRE courses. Teachers were asked 12 open ended questions about their opinion and view of the courses. Content analysis used to analysis

This study examined effectiveness of HRE in Turkey. Looked at course content, activities, methods, materials and assessment to assess effectiveness. Majority of teachers (68%) felt content of textbooks did not match student level, too heavy and info loaded, students had a difficult time understanding, many example were abstract and not related to daily life. Majority of teachers reported activities were not sufficient, citing little course time, overcrowded classrooms, and felt incompetent to apply activities to content. Some 22.5% of teachers indicated that they found the educational materials sufficient and 15.5% thought they were partially sufficient, whereas the majority (62.0%) believed the educational materials used in the course were insufficient. Majority of teachers believed assessment was sufficient but some stated ‘We cannot observe each student sufficiently due to overcrowded classes and limited class time’, and ‘We are not sure whether the knowledge turns into behavior and exams are not predictive enough to conclude in this respect’. Overall, most teachers believed the HRE was not effective due to limitations such as overcrowded classroom and limited class time. https://scholarlycommons.law.case. Literature review – HRE specific This article examines the rise of HRE and its potential for positive change, as well as its to undergraduate education challenges and possibilities. It is not simply enough for students to learn about international edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004 human rights law or to stay updated on current events. Rather, HRE content must be paired &context=swb with teaching pedagogy that emphasizes global responsibility and community, interconnectedness, the re-humanization of victims and perpetrators of human rights abuse, and potential for enacting solutions for positive change. HRE is a vital component of undergraduate curricula for universities that take the ideals of social responsibility and global citizenship seriously. high-impact learning strategies offer possibilities for advancing HRE among undergraduate students, such as students being involved with community or study abroad. Unfortunately, the ideals of HRE are sometimes at odds with traditional approaches to undergraduate education that stress neutrality and objectivity.

Link A study of effectiveness of human rights education in Turkey. Journal Of Peace Education, 2(1), 53–68. 2005

Kepenekci

Major findings

Method

Author

Table 2.1 (continued)

Mubangizi

Major findings

Review of national polls that show American support for the rights of its own minorities, women, and homosexual persons grew steadily during the last half of the 20th century with the percentage of white Americans who agreed that blacks should have “as good a chance as White people to get any kind of job” rose from 44% to 97%. National polls do not show a similar increase in support for human rights abroad. In a 2002 poll, 47% of Americans rated the human rights goal as “very important” and an additional 43% rated it as “somewhat important”. College students similarly assign substantial importance but low priority to HR. Although most Americans agree that HR are important and should be a component of US foreign policy, concern for human rights is substantially influenced by current events, and ranks consistently below issues of national self-interest, wanes as the cost of supporting human rights increases, and is not spontaneously considered by many Americans as a factor on specific foreign policy issues. Poll results also show that human rights support consistently relates to self-identified liberalism and Democratic party membership. Endorsing human rights is related to greater global knowledge. Studies show that expressed concern for human rights increases with education Literature review in South Africa Roles and responsibilities of leaders of HRE in South Africa are discussed. Links between HRE HRE and democracy. Lack of knowledge and information of human rights prevent African people from claiming and exercising their human rights. The involvement of government in HRE in Africa is dealt with by the development of school curricula, while training of officials has been left to NGOs, although there is growing capacity among African universities. Main target audiences for HRE by the government appear are educational institutions. Some universities have established centers for human rights that play an important role in HRE. by providing funding to public universities with law schools that offer HRE, the South African government plays an indirect role in such education

Method

Literature review of human rights in USA

Author

MacFarland and Matthews

Link

(continued)

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo. php?script=sci_arttext&pi d=S1996-20962015000200014

http://people.wku.edu/sam. mcfarland/documents/JHRPDF.pdf

Nordin et al

This study looked at the application of the recommendations given by the German Kultusministerkonferenz in 1980 for human rights education in primary and secondary schools. Student findings- 54.4% indicated that they knew much about human rights, but majority could only name a few human rights. Shows higher levels of HRE activities did not result in higher level of knowledge of HR. Female students able to name HR significantly higher than male students. Teacher findings- direct instruction and textbook based activities were ranked less effective in teaching HR, project based activities ranked as most effective. Reports that schools do not empower students to become in HR in their personal lives such as in the recommendations. Also 62.1% of teachers report having little or no involvement in HR activities themselves Questionnaire with 23 questions. Study assessed law students’ perceptions of human rights; and to determine whether or not they viewed an HRE course as relevant to their lives and ambitions. Regarding respondents’ Subjects were year 1 (76) and knowledge on human rights principles, 31.1% gained their knowledge from books, 7.4% year 4 (107) law students in from mass media and 8.2% from internet. 32.8% of respondents stated they had gained Malaysia. knowledge from all three sources. The majority stated that HRE is important and they want to learn more about HR and ‘its relation to day-to-day life in Malaysia. They reported HRE could help them understand rights and responsibilities of individuals and learn to respect the rights and perform the responsibilities. Those answering negatively claim HRE is not beneficial and burdensome, as some already struggled with existing study requirements. The majority of the law students felt HRE can strengthen unity within a multi-ethnic society. Most preferred method of teaching HR is through lecture based teaching. Other preferred method of teaching includes debate, tutorial, PBL and mooting. The least preferred methods are client counselling, field work, e-learning, drama and quiz

Major findings

Method

43 German schools – 144 teachers and 2824 students. 2 surveys, 1 for teachers and one for students.

Author

Mueller

Table 2.1 (continued) Link

https://ac.els-cdn.com/ S1877042812037846/1-s2.0S1877042812037846-main. pdf?_tid=9d48c981-cfca-475b-8da76c7a5bdf9b6c&acdnat=1526076269 _1165362352a308647077632b1c4c3 89c

http://archive.hrea.org/pubs/ HREA-Research-in-HRE-Papers_ issue2.pdf

Ndohvu et al

Nduta

This baseline survey examined the level of understanding of human rights in the country Exploratory, cross-sectional and the institutions offering HRE. Survey showed majority of Kenyans are aware of their survey in Kenya. Mixed rights. The findings also indicate that many Kenyans are aware of rights abuses by state and methods-2009- 1240 respondents in the general public non-state actors. Some rights violations are easily tolerated such as spousal violence and child labor. While most Kenyans know where and how to report rights abuses, they remain surveyed. Interviews with key reluctant to report due to fear of victimisation as well lack of trust and confidence in those informants such as chiefs or mandated to deal with rights abuses. Community Based Organisations as well as Nonreligious leaders. Governmental Organisations have undertaken informal and formal community awareness campaigns to educate the public about human rights issues. 46.6% had witnessed conduct by security forces which amounted to torture of those under their custody. 26.4% showed that they knew somebody else whose house had been searched in the last five years without a valid court search warrant. 63.7% of the respondents have experienced some form of discrimination. The dominant forms of discrimination experienced were: ethnic 29.1%, religious 13.6%, economic 16.5%, gender 19.6% and political 12.0%. The survey revealed that only a handful of the staff working in the academic and non-academic institutions had full training in human rights This study examined factors affecting human rights integration in public secondary schools Survey to Kenya teachers and in Kenya and found instructional resources for teaching human right were inadequate. students – closed and open Teachers used lecture method to teach human right education. Teacher’s perception towards ended questions- mixed human right education was positive though many had low self-efficacy due to lack of methods. 12 public schools in training on how to teach HRE. Students showed high level of human rights awareness with Kasarani Sub-county. 298 the internet being a major contributor to this awareness. the key source of first encounter students responded and 40 with aspects of human rights is the internet and websites at 60% followed by Family and teachers. Parents at 20.5%. 93% of students reported having aspect of HRE in their school subjects. None of the student exhibit low level of awareness of human rights, however, only few that had high level of HR awareness. Teachers who took part in this study acknowledge that children have rights and cited several examples of those rights. The most common rights cited were right to education, right to life, right to quality health care, right to food and shelter among others

Major findings

Method

Author

Link

(continued)

http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/ bitstream/handle/11295/92838/ Nduta_School%20Factors%20 Influencing%20Integration%20 Of%20Human%20Rights%20 Education%20In%20Public%20 Secondary%20School. pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

https://profiles.uonbi.ac.ke/ jumandohvu/files/baseline_survey_ on_the_status_of_human_rights_ and_human_rights_studies_in_ kenya_2.pdf

Method

Literature review

Semi structured interview of children aged 8–16. Students randomly selected from basic schools within the Madina Ghana community. Total of 360 respondents, 57% were female

Author

Parish

Portia, Shulamit & Enyonam

Table 2.1 (continued)

The academic challenge to human rights comes from scholars who make the following claims; that human rights are not “universal” but biased in favor of western cultural views. Historical analysis of changes in national education systems at policy level reveal that many nations are incorporating global discourse of human rights into the curriculum. rise of human rights themes in secondary school social science textbooks from 69 countries. textbooks that incorporate human rights are more likely to be found in countries with a more internationalized curriculum, in western and more developed countries. The importance of the role of teachers and their attitudes towards the curriculum policy is often cited as a reason for limited success in the implementation of HRE. Evidence is found of teachers facing pressure to spend time developing student competencies in examination subjects, particularly Math, Reading and Science, at the expense of time that could be spent on HRE. Some of these studies indicate that there is often a lack of teacher training in HRE leading to lack of knowledge and commitment on the part of teachers. universality of students’ understanding of human rights is not uniform, with variation found between countries and genders. some findings have revealed that students, despite having experienced HRE courses, feel powerless in facilitating their own or other people’s human rights 95% of participants agreed that humans have rights and 80% were able to mention at least one of the right children have, such as right to live, right to join any association of their own, right to quality health care and right to be free from hunger. 55% of the respondents claimed they know a document in which children rights are stipulated but only 26% were able to mention at least one of the document correctly. 94% of the participants wanted groups be formed to educate children on their rights. When respondents were asked whether or not they know each right comes with a corresponding responsibility, 87% answered correctly and gave an example of their responsibility when they have the right to education. 90% wish the group could consist of both sexes, and not separated into genders. At first researchers gave students paper surveys written in English but realized students had a difficult time reading English but was able to respond if the researcher read it to them. Also the respondents from the private schools performed better in answering the questions than those from the public schools. Some of the teachers were not comfortable with the administration of the questionnaires in their schools for the fear of poor performance of students.

Major findings

https://www.crin.org/en/library/ publications/ africa-survey-findings-human-rightsawareness-among-children

Link

Method

Teacher survey about knowledge of HRE, attitudes toward HRE, and what they are doing to teach HRE. Some Likert scale questions. Also looked at demographics – age, gender, location, etc. Paper survey given at Confratute summer conference for teachers in July 2009 at the University of CT. 53 completed surveys – kindergarten to high school teachers, 5 from private schools, range of urban, rural and suburban schools.

Author

Stockman

(continued)

Link https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?referer=https:// www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&art icle=1121&context=srhonors_theses

Major findings

Argues that it’s important the US set a HRE example for other countries as a major world power. Training of teachers, availability of HRE materials, and support from the government are necessary to provide HRE to students in the US. The study explores teachers’ beliefs about HRE teaching materials, training, support, confidence, and current practices. Any progress with HRE in the US has been achieved by individual teachers, parents, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs have developed programs that can assist individuals who want to implement HRE in their classrooms. Examples of these organizations are Amnesty International, the Human Rights Resource Center, and Human Rights Education Associates (HREA). Despite the resources available, usually individual teachers are teaching human rights only with the permission of their immediate supervisors; there aren’t many school-wide or district-wide programs in place. In 20 of 50 states HRE is mandated but many of those states consider HRE a suggestion and leave it up to districts to decide on its implementation. States that have the most comprehensive HRE implementation are Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, and Vermont. Findings- 47% of teachers surveyed reported that this was the first time they had heard of HRE. 70% reported that they fit the topic human rights into their teaching. 45% reported needing training in HRE and 40% reported needing curriculum. When asked on how they incorporate it into their teaching, 22% reported teaching civil rights, 28% reported teaching diversity, and 20% reported using literature, such as To Kill a Mockingbird to teach human rights. Other responses were unsupportive of HRE including statements like “often these topics in schools become vehicles not for education but for advocacy for or against particular interest groups. I do not support that.” Overall there was strong support from teachers for imbedded HRE into their teaching.

UMINN

Tibbets & Kirchschlaeger

Major findings

Most (85%) of programmes include teaching about violence against women and domestic violence and violence towards children. When human rights related content is included in teaching, it is not always formalised in terms of explicit learning outcomes. 32% singled out men’s violence against women and domestic violence as an area in need of development. Two thirds of respondents state that the teaching includes practical aspects, i.e., teaching about how students are to relate to, make assessments and take human rights into account in their future professional careers. Medical programmes and programmes in psychology and social work have given similar answers to the questions, stating that all three areas (HR, men/women violence and child violence) are covered by the programmes. teaching about men’s violence against women and domestic violence as well as teaching about violence towards children is less prominent and less formalised within the five programmes. A total of 86% of the respondents answer that human rights are integrated into other courses and therefore not offered to the students as separate courses. almost all departments (95%) engage their own teachers in teaching HR. nursing programmes rely heavily on experienced nurses regarding teaching competence in human rights issues generally. Psychology programmes similarly value practical experience highly. In social work, on the other hand, a high proportion of teachers have pursued their own research in human rights related areas Qualitative – lit review. Looked This article overviews some of the available research on human rights education, specifically outcomes. Researcher found older children and children from higher income at studies or programs that families think about HR more abstractly while younger children and children from lower self-identified as HRE related. The searches were made through income families think of HR in terms of what they can do or have. Also found that HRE is respected by students but shows that students have a misconception of what HR really are. publicly available education Studies show that HRE is effective in moral education in children. Children with HRE have databases more positive attitudes toward minority children. Overall, found a need for more scientifically rigorous evaluation on outcomes of HRE, especially research that looks at specific learning environments and groups. This article also looked at theory of HRE E-survey at museum Teachers/ Questionnaire found that there is interest in incorporating HRE into schools. 40% of visitors N=50 respondents clearly indicated awareness of whether their school had goals related to HRE, whereas 60% indicated that they were “not sure” about HRE related goals in their organization There needs to be a comprehensive approach on HRE so it can be recognized in schools and actually have an impact

Method

Swedish Higher Sweden. Survey- open and closed ended questions. The Education analysis focuses on three areas: Authority human rights; men’s violence against women and domestic violence; and violence towards children. Five programmes were selected for analysis: medical programmes (physicians); programmes in nursing; programmes in occupational therapy; programmes in psychology; and programmes in social work

Author

Table 2.1 (continued) Link

www.hrusa.org/thisismyhome/ project/documents/ EdMNSurveySummary-online.doc

http://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/peace/ files/2013/05/tibbitts_kirchschlaeger_ research_hre_jhre_1_2010.pdf

http://english.uka.se/about-us/ publications/ reports%2D%2Dguidelines/ reports%2D%2Dguidelines/2017-0920-a-gender-perspective-on-humanrights-education.html

Yeshanew

White & Roch

Method

Structured questionnaireresearch, open & closed endedmixed methods in 2009 with 152 Irish teachers from 110 school on their HRE understanding, attitudes and practice and in relation to school policy and practice. 85% were female and 14% were male. 51% had between 2 and 10 years with 36% having over 20 years’ experience Online Amnesty International survey asked questions to help shape a pilot MOOC human rights course. Over 2,000 responses from self-selected web viewers from multiple countries including United Kingdom, United States, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Germany, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands, Kenya, Bangladesh and Egypt Literature review

Author

Waldron et al

Major findings

Link

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ education/2015/11/50-percent-ofrespondents-want-to-learn-how-totake-action-for-human-rights/

https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/ Article argued the importance of HRE to avoid violations of human rights and asks for African states to carry out their obligation with respect to promotion of human rights. States handle/2263/1127/yeshanew_sa_1. that HRE is often linked with economic and community development along with women’s pdf?sequence=1 rights. HRE can create informed citizenship and question violations of HR and seek remedies. HRE increases people’s capacity to influence decision makers. HRE helps people to use non- violent ways to solve human rights problems. To be effective, HRE needs to be simple and clear and all parts need to have a commitment to HRE. HRE needs to represent diversity and be designed in a way that recognizes it. Baseline study needs to be done to assess most pressing local human rights issues. HRE needs to have a long term commitment and not only be reactive to crisis. HRE should not only be focuses in schools but in other avenues to expand education to the population

50% said their main motivation to take a HR course is to learn how to take action for human rights. 23% said they are looking for personal development and 22% for professional development or job advancement. Respondents said they would like to have the opportunity to receive practical advice and hear about real world cases of people taking action. 60% ranked freedom of expression as the most relevant topic among the five topics of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, privacy, freedom of association and mass surveillance. comments about privacy showed that there are worries about mass surveillance, its legality, and what can be done to protect privacy online

https://www.dcu.ie/sites/default/files/ This study provides the first national baseline data in relation to primary teachers’ chrce/pdf/CHRCE-primary-teacherunderstanding of human rights and HRE and contributes to the development of a research base on HRE in Ireland. Most respondents indicated that children should be made aware of human-rights-report.pdf their rights by the age of 11 (97%), There is strong support for HRE among primary school teachers and that HRE is seen as having a positive influence on children’s experiences. 35% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that the curriculum is too crowded for HRE. 31% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed there was a high level of support for HRE in the system generally. Lack of knowledge to describe the content of HRE was also expressed by respondents. Over half of respondents reported that their schools implemented some form of HRE. While teachers were positively disposed towards HRE to make a positive contribution to children’s lives, how to do so at systemic and local levels was a concern

38

Y. Vissing

s­ tudies focused on HRE higher education training efforts, three on the use of public feedback, and two relied upon information from key informants. There were over 7804 primary and secondary students who provided input into our understanding of HRE, 4014 primary/secondary school teachers, 2087 from people in higher education programs, 3240 members of the general public, and 208 responses from key leaders. Review of these research studies indicate that nobody is researching the same thing, nor are they researching HRE using the same methodology or sampling strategy. This may be due, in part, with what Flowers indicates as the multiple dimensions of human rights, but it also conveys that a consolidated, comparative set of studies about HRE doesn’t yet exist. This reinforces the World Programme’s request for higher education to be diligent in the education not just of human rights principles, but also training approaches and research strategies.

Challenges of HRE in Higher Education In the creation of sustainable democratic societies and critical thinkers, higher education holds extraordinary responsibility. But there are pragmatic logistics that higher education must address, such as – Who is going to implement human rights instruction? How is it to be implemented? These specifics are not detailed in the treaties or in the World Programme. There seems to be no standard with what is to be provided as rights-education. This leaves significant variability in what is to be provided as rights-education, who provides it or how it is provided. While global rights-education mandates exist, and while there have been attempts to identify if implementation of rights-education occurs, how HRE/CRE is actually implemented at the local or institutional levels isn’t well-studied. There are some reports, but most of them are qualitative in nature and focus on case-study examples. It appears that when rights-education is implemented at the local level, it can be provided in schools, by NGOs, or in community contexts. It could begin when a child is in preschool or not occur until someone is in secondary school or college, if at all. Within the higher education institution, is HRE to be the responsibility of a particular unit, department, course, or embedded in every class of every discipline? If it is a class, it is required or elective? How should HRE competency be assessed? Should HRE competency be a graduation requirement? In order for HRE be maximally effective, certain relationships could be studied. One issue concerns the paucity of existing research and the need for development of stronger and more comprehensive HRE/CRE research tools and analyses. What is being taught as HRE/CRE? Are treaties learned? What topics are focused on? How is it taught? How often is it taught – in third grade, seventh grade, or eleventh grade? How long does the training occur – just once in a one-hour block, in an entire course, every year with repeated information to reinforce key concepts, in scaffolded modules where what is learned progressively increases? Is the educational delivery designed to be interactive or reflective, to focus on readings, discussion, or experiential education? How effective is rights-education in general, and what causes

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

39

variations in instruction and outcome? What could we be doing in our instruction that would create better learning outcomes? There aren’t clear-cut answers to these questions at this time. Research is needed to identify what is going on now, how well it is working, and figure out best-practices so the field can move forward. Another issue focuses on identifying how the people who are actually doing the training of HRE obtained the information and expertise in the first place to impart rights-education to others. How do people who are put in positions of responsibility for teaching rights-education to others actually learn about what it is – and how best to teach it? The people most responsible for educating others in society are professors at colleges and universities who could impart essential knowledge and skills to students so they can then utilize that information in their respective fields to improve the world. What are universities providing as human rights education? How comprehensive is sights-education embedded within the academy? How do those who are teaching about human rights actually gain their expertise? How diligent has higher education been in carrying out treaty mandate to ensure that every citizens understands what human rights are and how to use them? In order to better understand these issues and answer such questions, exploratory analyses have been conducted.

Undergraduate Human Rights Studies Programs The way human rights courses are handled within higher education varies significantly. Some colleges and universities offer no course at all relating to human rights. Others may incorporate human rights examples or information into modules or assignments of an existing class on another topic, such as in history or sociology. Human rights may be embedded into other types of courses, especially those dealing with race, gender, international relations, or government. Fewer colleges offer courses specifically in human rights, and fewer still may offer specific undergraduate programs in human rights. Instruction of human rights seems to be the exception rather than a standard course in most institutions of higher education. Those that make a commitment to human rights may develop interdisciplinary minors, concentrations or tracks within established departments, such as political science. From an analysis of main undergraduate programs that provide a human rights emphasis, the following universities were identified as providing some of the most comprehensive undergraduate education in the area of human rights. Undergraduate specialties in human rights are provided at universities from around the world including Malmö University in Sweden, New York Barnard College’s BA in Human Rights, University of Dayton, the Embrey Human Rights Program of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Trinity College and UConn in Connecticut, Bachelor of Arts in Human Rights and Equity Studies at York University in Toronto, Carleton University in Ottawa, Monash University in Melbourne, Kingston University

40

Y. Vissing

London, and Makerere University in Uganda (Human Rights Careers 2018). These programs have an introductory human rights course that lays out the human rights framework, and then they provide specialized courses in particular aspects of human rights and social justice. Some provide seminars or service learning experiences as part of their human rights program. From a cursory review of these programs, it appears that they have developed unique programs that their institutions deem relevant to meet the needs of their students. There is no overall accreditation organization for human rights education programs in higher education and aggregate data does not appear to be submitted, collected or analyzed to understand trends and best practices. It is possible that this research exists, but to date, the author has not been able to identify it to include it in this analysis of higher education’s human rights programmes. Research on how human rights courses are embedded into higher education structures would be a fruitful area for future research.

 lternative Higher Education and Professional Human Rights A Training Options The World Programme recommends that all professionals learn about human rights. Many are already graduated from universities and did not obtain formal academic training there. They could, of course, take human rights courses at universities. But some people do not live near colleges that provide such courses. Other people may desire the training but don’t want to enroll in official university courses. What are their options? Many educational materials were described earlier in this article. There are other educational options, but they vary significantly in price, format, quality and quantity. Some of the major educational alternatives to those in formal higher education institutes include the following: Human Rights Educators USA (https://hreusa.org/) is a network of human rights educators and advocates that provides resources, information and support to its members free of charge. Developed in 2011 in partnership between Harvard and the University of San Francisco School of Education, its mission is to integrate international human rights standards into formal and informal educational settings and to promote human rights education policies. The University of San Francisco School of Education has a master’s program specifically in human rights education. HRE-­ USA members advocate for the inclusion of human rights into national and state education standards, curricula and pedagogy, conducting research, and developing resources and training. HRE-USA created a human rights curriculum integration guide to help teachers https://hreusa.org/hre-guide/. It does not provide courses but supports teachers of human rights and links them to programs and courses that could be of interest to them. It is a credible organization.

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

41

The University of Minnesota created a Human Rights Library has assembled a fantastic compilation of human rights resource materials, treaties, and information that can be easily found at their website http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/ . It is an invaluable resource for anyone anywhere doing research on human rights. It has created applied research tools for human rights programs, which is an important recommendation of the World Programme. It has educational materials, guidelines for corporations to become more rights-respecting in its over sixty-thousand core human rights documents that are available to everyone free of charge. Training 4 Excellence (training4excellence.com) website contains a set of free human rights courses by topic area (general human rights, child rights, LBGTQ+ rights, disability rights, etc.). In each of the free online courses there are dozens of links to films, readings, organizations, and resources that will help anyone to learn about human rights or teach students about them. This is a super website that is very easy to access and use the comprehensive lists of materials. It also has the option of providing courses for a price that will give the student exams that will lead to a certification in different topics. The website, Human Rights Careers, contains fifty courses in different areas of human rights. The courses have readings, films, and exams. One can take the course for free, or if one wants a credential to prove having taken the class that can be provided for a cost. It is accessible at https://www.humanrightscareers.com/courses/ Human Rights Education Associates (HREA) is also known as Human Rights Campus, but it is not an academic institution and does not provide accreditation for courses. It has a board of directors and partnerships with credible organizations like UNICEF.  They conduct credible research and provide workshops, e-courses and tutorials for a charge that typically range between 75 and 465 euro for access to information that other HRE websites make available at no charge. The website UDEMY provides a couple of free human rights courses and some that are around ten dollars. The reviews of this program indicate that the larger company is designed to be a for-profit organization. There is no accreditation agency or quality control. Like other pay-to-take human rights courses, students must be aware that there is no credentialing for having taken a course from them. (https:// www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=human%20rights&src=ukw). There are other organizations that provide human rights educational materials. This project did not focus on those designed at the K-12 level. Human rights curriculum, film, assignments and other resource material are readily available. In most of these distributions, there is no official vetting of materials for quality, and no credentialing process for having learned the material. It is important to realize that anyone can access valuable human rights materials free of charge, usually immediately online. It is unnecessary to pay to learn about the fundamentals of human rights. As useful as many of the above resources can be, they are not a replacement for taking human rights courses with trained human rights professors in carefully designed academic programs in colleges and universities. What information is provided to students in higher education human rights settings? Answers to this question are explored next.

42

Y. Vissing

Exploration of Higher Education Human Rights Syllabi What information is provided in higher education human rights courses? What are the types of assignments typically provided to students, and what are they required to learn? In order to find out, a search for HRE higher education syllabi was conducted. Most HRE syllabi posted pertained to a specific course at a specific institution. There were three websites that attempted to consolidate HRE syllabi from a variety of higher education institutions. These included the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the University of Southern California. Each syllabus was coded for the following information: Name of professor who created the syllabus, college, name of the course, level of the course, department in which the course was taught, central books and reading materials used, instructional format, and assignments used in the course for student learning and evaluation. The syllabi were analyzed by discipline area and type of course. Sources for these syllabi are: Institute for Human Rights at the University of Connecticut  – Human Rights Syllabi – https://teachinghumanrights.uconn.edu/browse-all-syllabi/ American Association for the Advancement of Science Human Rights Council – Human Rights Syllabi – https://www.aaas.org/page/syllabi-science-and-human-rights University of Southern California Institute for Global Health -Health and Human Rights Syllabi Database – http://apruglobalhealth.org/hhrsyllabi/ Two hundred and ninety-eight HRE syllabi were reviewed – 192 syllabi were obtained from the UConn website, 68 from the AAAS, and 38 from USC.  The majority (85%) of the syllabi were from HRE courses in the United States, while 15% were from universities in other parts of the world, including the Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia (Table 2.2). In reviewing the syllabi, in what departments or under what general topics were the HRE courses located? Table 2.3 shows the distribution of course syllabi. It is possible that a syllabus could fit several areas, such as Human Rights in Global Medicine – such a course would fit in both medicine and international categories. Therefore, coding attempted to incorporate the broad range of issues and were not mutually exclusive nor exhaustive, but did reflect trends of how a human rights course was structured. For instance, the most commonly reflected themes were global, health, political science and law. Sixty-eight (N = 68) of the syllabi reflected an international or cultural focus – but it is likely that more do as well. Fifty-eight

Table 2.2  HRE Syllabi Source UCONN AAAS USC Total

# of Syllabi 192 68 38 298

# US Syllabi 169 50 33 252

# International Syllabi 23 18 5 46

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

43

Table 2.3  HRE offerings by department Department/Topic Anthropology, Culture Application, Practice Arts, Media, Linguistics & Humanities Children Demography Development Disability Earth Science Economics Education Engineering Ethics (medical, bio, etc.) Foreign Policy Genocide, holocaust Geography, international, global Health, specific, general, public History Human Rights (general) Law & legal focus Philosophy/Theory Political Science Psychology Race/Ethnicity Refugees, Immigration Religion Research Sociology Social Work Science (misc) War Women’s health, sexual, gender, reproductive

AAAS 15 1 1 1 2

UCONN 9 5 16 2 1 1

USC

2 2

2 7 5 1 7

4 22

1 6 4 1 3

3 4 7 40 13 5 11 23 9 34

1

23

4

3 4 5 2

7 7 4 1 1

9 7

9

(N  =  58) had a health or medical focus, 43 focused on political science/foreign policy and 27 concerned human rights law. Women and reproductive health care ranked the highest focused of all demographic groups. Groups that scored lowest were those in disability and age (none for the elderly and only 4 about children/youth). Review of the syllabi reveal trends in both what is being taught about human rights, and how it is taught within higher education. Seventy-one different colleges or universities were included in this analysis, with twenty-one of them from international countries. One can assume that human rights courses are taught elsewhere

44

Y. Vissing

but their syllabi were simply not posted, so it is best to consider the syllabi analyzed as a sample of the likelihood of all human rights courses. The degree to which they are representative of all HRE courses at universities is an obvious weakness of this study. On the other hand, this study is one of the few to look at higher education human rights curriculum in detail, and therefore provides valuable results. The syllabi trends reflect the importance of human rights in law, government, and healthcare. There is an increasing trend, reflected especially by the AAAS data, of HRE becoming embedded in the sciences. There was a noticeable lack of HRE syllabi from all sources in Departments of Education. This could be because the data sets were US based, and the US’s lack of support of human rights at this point in time. Also surprising was the lack of emphasis on teaching students HRE research or application skills. The syllabi provided details about what literature students were expected to read, how the course is structured, the assignments they were given, and how they were to be graded. Looking at detail on how human rights was taught to students, it was fascinating to see that there is almost no overlap of what materials are being used. Each professor and each course seems to select their own reading materials, and they are almost never using the same material. The only treaty listed for reading was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it was listed only as required reading in a handful of courses. Some courses used books, others focused on peer-­ reviewed journal articles. Few listed internet and current social media materials. There was a trend to ground the readings in classic scholarly materials instead of a current-events approach. Syllabi were reviewed to see how the courses were structured, and they ranged from seminars to online to hybrid to traditional classroom formats. College student competence in the area of human rights is assessed primarily through traditional formats such as tests, essay-response papers and detailed research papers. Few of the syllabi reflected experiential exposure to human rights at the local of international level. Assignments were classroom-based, not in the field. Despite recommendations for experiential exposure to rights issues and the creation of emotionally significant learning experiences in human rights, this does not appear to be occurring, or is not described as a major learning approach in the syllabi. Rather, traditional paper and test formats continue to be the mainstay. There are clearly attempts to engage student discourse and dialogue about rights issues through class discussions, presentations and projects. Most of the assignments on which students were graded were not collective but done in solo. They were largely observational, as defined by hearing lectures, reading materials, watching films, or listening to speakers. Tests, papers, and journals/blogs would be done at the individual level. Pedagogical recommendations for effective student learning to embrace more applied experiences where students had direct contact with human rights issues, advocates, policy makers, practitioners, or oppressed individuals did not seem to be occurring as a primary instructional modality.

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

45

Searching Law Schools for Human Rights Emphasis Observing that law programs, and political science departments (which are often precursors for law degrees) provided significant instruction in human rights education, the next stage of this research was to look at the degree to which human rights education was an embedded part of law schools and the legal profession.

 merican Bar Association Human Rights Higher Education A Courses The American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights has created a human rights program with curriculum materials available for both students in K-12 as well as undergraduate college courses. They recommend that numerous human rights courses be offered so that students can graduate with a comprehensive understanding of human rights. Their courses include: a) 1 introductory course (3 credits); b) 1 International Law course (3 credits); c) 1 Human Perspectives Course (3 credits) d) 3 courses in Special Topic or Region (9 credits); e) and a seminar, placement or thesis (6 credits) for a total of 24 credits. A dozen courses were listed with sample syllabi. However, when trying to access the links to the syllabi, the links were not active. The links were associated with the University of California Berkley – http:// learning.berkeley.edu/AIUSA-syl/. It appears that the Berkeley list was moved to UConn, and the Berkeley link was broken but actually ended up defaulting to the UConn syllabi set analyzed above at https://teachinghumanrights.uconn.edu/ browse-all-syllabi/# . Therefore, it confirms that the UConn compilation of syllabi is the most comprehensive available for assessing human rights education. The American Bar Association undergraduate course information did provide other links not directly associated with the UConn center. These included courses such as Foundation of Human Rights, Genocide and Mass Atrocity, Women’s Rights, Children and Youth Rights, Human Rights and Health, Minority Rights, Human Rights and Migration, and Governance and Human Rights. A syllabi link was not active for them and appeared to default to the UConn list. However, a short set of recommended readings for that topic were provided. The issue is that most of the readings were from the 1990s; very few links were posted from the last decade. Their website attempted to provide human rights resources for different geographic areas, with brief materials listed on human rights in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, and South/Central America. But these are large areas with complex rights issues, most of which were not possible to be covered by the few resources listed. Therefore, while there are good intentions for the American Bar Association to provide access to curricular material for higher education, they seem limited in number and scope.

46

Y. Vissing

Masters in Human Rights Law Courses It appears that law schools have made a commitment to the incorporation of human rights courses and programs. In an analysis of master’s programs in human rights law, https://www.llmstudy.com/courses/human-rights-law/, it was found that there are over 189 courses in human rights provided. While a few of them were listed in the United States, most of them exist in Europe or are at international universities. The United Kingdom Human Rights Lawyers Association has over 1800 members. For instance, the University of Aberdeen offers six courses in human rights, Lancaster University offers six, the National University of Ireland at Galway, University of Witwatersand and Pretoria University offer four courses, the University of London Birkbeck offers three. Swansea University (Wales)‘s Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law and Observatory for the Human Rights of Children specialize on advanced higher education training in child rights education, implementation and research. There are some universities which specialize in human rights, such as the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. This database identified particular human rights law programs, including Finland’s Abo Akademi University Institute for Human Rights, the Central European University in Budapest, the Global Campus of Human Rights in Vienna, the International Human Rights Programme in Frankfurt, Istanbul Bilgi University programme in human rights, Leiden’s Human Rights Law programme, London School of Economics and Political Science master of laws, and the Middlesex University Human Rights Law program. Within the United States, the major human rights law programs listed were Northwestern University, University of Texas  – Austin, Georgetown University, University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota, University of California-Davis, University of North Carolina, University of Arizona, and Emory University. The American University College of Law offers three human rights courses Northeastern University offer two. Both undergraduate and graduate programs that are specifically designed to provide students with in-depth learning about human rights will provide more comprehensive and superior education than can be obtained from singular courses or fragmented course design. In the higher education marketplace, it is understandable that each university will design programs with slightly different foci in order to attract students and to provide more comprehensive coverage to the field of human rights education in higher education settings.

Conclusion Assessment of human rights courses in higher education settings and for professionals indicates that significant strides have been made towards the realization of Phase 2 of the World Programme for human rights education. There are many universities around the world who have active rights programs, and countless others

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

47

provide human rights education courses or modules within courses. However, there is a lack of research on the content, quality, and comprehensiveness of introductory human rights courses, as assessed from the review of syllabi. There is little comparative research available to indicate how programs differ. There is little basis for the author to determine best practices of human rights education in higher education settings as a result. Higher education has the opportunity to become a leader in conducting HRE research and training students on how to become HRE researchers. Pedagogically, active engagement of students is the recommended direction for learning, yet it appears that the vast majority of college level human rights courses continue to rely upon old formats of written examinations and research papers. While these certainly have their place within the academy, hot-topic ssue topics such as those found in human rights could productively incorporate service learning and more emphasis on a student participatory model of learning. The mantra that teachers can’t teach what they haven’t learned plagues human rights instructional techniques. If there was greater emotional and interpersonal involvement of students with human rights issues, and there was greater role modeling of them both within the classroom and the larger academic community (not to mention the community at large), this would help students not just understand abstract concepts but also policy, advocacy, and the role of human rights defenders. This study found that human rights education courses in departments of education were not visible. One could argue that many education departments do incorporate human rights education, but the fact that this information did not automatically pop up, the way it did for law schools, is a curiosity. Why departments of education have not assumed a leadership position in HRE is worthy of exploration oin addressing the question of whether schools are vehicles of social change or maintenance of the status quo (Vissing and Williams 2018). In sum, what does higher education need to do to make sure teachers can most effectively help students to learn HRE? One, they need to be empowered with a pedagogy that allows them to adequately employ a rights-respecting framework to the instruction of human rights education. Two, they need to know the best practices of human rights education as well as things not to do. Three, they need to have access to good human rights curriculum and materials, including lesson plans, films, assignments, service-learning strategies, discussion tools, and project ideas. Four, they need to have access to research that guides them towards most effective strategies for rights education. Five, they need to collect data on their own practices to determine both process and outcome research that will guide them towards the modification of future rights education actions. Six, there needs to be ways for this collective information to be shared with others so there can be aggregate benefit from the exchange of human rights education strategies and materials, as well as comparative analyses of the benefits of rights education approaches.

48

Y. Vissing

References Anapol, A. (2018). US pulls out of human rights council. Retrieved from http://thehill.com/policy/ international/393086-us-pulls-out-of-un-human-rights-council Bratt, P., Mompoint-Gaillard, P., & Salema, M. H. (2009). How all teachers can support citizenship and human rights education: A framework for the development of competences. Available from http://www.theewc.org/Content/Library/Teacher-Training/Training-Tools/How-all-teacherscan-support-citizenship-and-human-rights-education-a-framework-for-the-development-ofcompetences Campbell, T. (1999). Human rights: a culture of controversy. Journal of Law and Society, 26(1), 6–26. European Training and Research Center for Human Rights and Democracy. (2018). Understanding human rights manual. Retrieved from http://www.theewc.org/Content/Library/Teacher-Training/ Training-Tools/Understanding-Human-Rights-A-Manual-on-Human-Rights-Education Flowers, N. (2007). What is human rights education? Available at http://www.theewc.org/Content/ Library/Research-Development/Literature/Human-Rights-Training-for-Adults-What-TwentySix-Evaluation-Studies-Say-About-Design-Implementation-and-Follow-Up Freire, P. (1968). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Penguin. Gaudelli, W., & Ferneke, W. (2004). Teaching about global human rights for global citizenship. The Social Studies, 95(1), 16–26. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/254350960_Teaching_about_Global_Human_Rights_for_Global_Citizenship Giroux, H. (2018). Truthout. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/ henry-a-giroux-the-nightmare-of-neoliberal-fascism/ Giroux, H., & Kostas, M. (2001). Beyond the corporate university: pedagogy, culture, and literary studies in the new millennium. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Human Rights Careers. (2018). Bachelors degrees in human rights. Retrieved from https://www. humanrightscareers.com/magazine/15-exciting-opportunities-to-pursue-a-bachelors-degreein-human-rights/ International Institute for Child Rights and Development. (IICRD). (2018). Our Approach.333. Retrieved from http://www.iicrd.org/approach Lundy, L., Kilkelly, U., & Byrne, B. (2013). Incorporation of the United Nations convention on the Rights of the child in law: A comparative review. International Journal of Children's Rights, 21(3), 442–463. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-55680028. Meintjes, G. (1997). Human rights education as empowerment. In G.  Andreopoulos (Ed.), Human rights education for the twenty-first century (pp. 64–79). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mezirow, J. (2009). Transformative learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Struthers, A. (2016). Teaching human rights in schools. Oxford: University Press Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.oup.com/2016/04/teaching-human-rights-in-schools/ Teaching Tolerance. (2018). 5 standards for effective teaching. Teaching Tolerance. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/five-standards-of-effective-pedagogy Tibbets, F., & Kirschschlager, P. (2010). Perspectives of research on human rights education. Retrieved from http://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/peace/files/2013/05/tibbitts_kirchschlaeger_ research_hre_jhre_1_2010.pdf Ulansky, E., & Witenberg, W. (2017). Is nationalism on the rise? Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/elena-ulansky/is-nationalism-on-the-ris_b_10224712.html UNICEF. (2014). Child rights education toolkit. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/crc/files/ UNICEF_CRE_Toolkit_FINAL_web_version170414.pdf United Nations. (2016). Council holds high-level panel on the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations declaration on human rights education and training. Retrieved from http:// www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20494&LangID=E

2  A Review of Human Rights Education in Higher Education

49

United Nations. (2018). World programme for human rights education. Retrieved from http:// www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Education/Training/Pages/Programme.aspx Vissing, Y., & Williams, J. (2018, July). You can’t teach what you don’t know. Presentation at the International Sociological Association Meetings. Toronto, Canada. Yvonne Vissing is Professor and Policy Chair for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Founding Director of the Center for Childhood & Youth Studies and Chair of the Sociology Department at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts USA. Dr. Vissing has also created a nonprofit organization to assist communities to advocate for improved community, child and family services. Author of five books with several others near completion, Dr. Vissing has presented her work at international and national meetings and is engaged in work that has both an international and a domestic focus. A true child advocate, she has trained thousands of professionals and students in a framework that is based upon the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child to work with, and for, children’s rights. As the research director for the Department of Sociology, she conducts both quantitative and qualitative research, and coordinates her region’s annual research conference. Her main areas of concentration have focused upon economic wellbeing of children and families, education, health, legal rights, and community obligation and comprehensive services. Vissing worked to create a national peace conference for youth, has been a major contributor to Oxford University’s Encyclopedia of Peace.  

Chapter 3

Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden and the United States Felisa Tibbitts, Thomas Nygren, Judit Novak, Denise Bentrovato, Johan Wassermann, and Anamika Abstract  This chapter presents the results of a cross-national study on secondary school students’ views about human rights and how they learned about human rights in school. The human rights education literature has recognised the importance of “vernacularization”, or localisation, in the learning of universal human rights themes and values (Merry, Law Soc Rev 35: 39–88, 2001; Merry, Am Anthropol 108(1): 38–51, 2006; Coysh, Human rights education and the politics of knowledge. Routledge, New York, 2016). This study involved classrooms in India, South Africa, Sweden and the United States, and demonstrates that vernacularization in human rights education practice has complex applications. The specific context influences not only relevant local human rights concerns, but also classroom teaching methodology and views towards taking action. Results suggest that further research into the vernacularization of human rights education needs to take into account multiple dimensions of the political and educational contexts in which learning is taking place. Keywords  Globalization · Human rights education · Ideology · India · Localization · Pedagogy · South Africa · Sweden · United States · Vernacularization

F. Tibbitts (*) Teachers College of Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. Nygren Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden J. Novak Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway D. Bentrovato · J. Wassermann University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Anamika Independent Scholar, Delhi, India © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 J. Zajda (ed.), Human Rights Education Globally, Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1913-9_3

51

52

F. Tibbitts et al.

I mportance of UDHR and the Expansion of HRE: Introduction There is a longstanding acceptance of education’s role in the promotion of peace, human rights, equality, respect for diversity, and sustainable development. Human Rights Education (HRE) is a practice-oriented expression of the high-minded ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), including equality and respect for human dignity. Amnesty International defines HRE as a “deliberative, participatory process aimed at empowering individuals, groups and communities … Its goal is to build a culture of respect for and action in the defense and promotion of human rights for all” (Amnesty International n.d.). As with other educational processes, HRE and learning has components of knowledge, skills and attitudes, which should be consistent with recognised human rights principles and which should empower individuals and groups to address oppression and injustice. The United Nations (UN) offers further explanation of what HRE encompasses: (a) Education about human rights, which includes providing knowledge and understanding of human rights norms and principles, the values that underpin them and the mechanisms for their protection; (b) Education through human rights, which includes learning and teaching in a way that respects the rights of both educators and learners; and (c) Education for human rights, which includes empowering persons to enjoy and exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others (UNGA 2011, Art. 2, para 2). Various UN instruments have promoted HRE as a responsibility of member states and over the past decades, researchers have documented a noticeable increase in the presence of HRE within the intended curriculum (see also Tibbitts 2017a, b). More than 83 countries across different regions of the world have adopted HRE in legislation, policy documents and curricula since the 1990s (Moon as quoted in Russell and Suarez 2017, p.  31). Textbook studies have also shown a dramatic increase in the number of times that human rights are mentioned, with increases most pronounced in Africa, Asia and the West, and least pronounced – though still improved – in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (p. 33). These statistics are not able to convey information about how HRE transpires in the classroom. We assume that how HRE is organised in schools will vary according to educational systems and national contexts. The former includes curriculum policies but also de-­ centralisation (the degree to which schools can determine their own curriculum), teacher autonomy (freedom to develop and deliver their lessons autonomously, though in accordance with curriculum policies), and teaching methods. Aims may differ. Then there are the students, and what they bring to HRE. Our research investigation did not look at the intended curriculum nor other factors in the school environment that might either reinforce or undermine HRE, such as participatory school processes. The research also did not explore student values nor their own intention to engage in some way in promoting human rights. Rather,

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden…

53

this study considers the question: Which content and methodologies are used (“about” and “through” human rights), and what influenced students’ understanding of human rights issues and perspectives of how to positively influence human rights (“for” human rights)? Some of these questions have been partially addressed in the literature, presented below.

Literature Review Vernacularization of Human Rights Themes Theoretical and applied research on HRE in schools has shown that treatment of human rights in school, if present at all, is likely to be oriented towards learning content (Tibbitts 2017a, b; Tibbitts and Fernekes 2010). Yet this content needs to be tailored for the local context. Scholars and practitioners agree that the “cosmopolitan” (read: universal) approach to human rights needs to be adapted for local sociocultural understandings, usually through intermediaries (Merry 2006). Within the field of formal education, these would be the teachers, curriculum developers and/ or textbook writers. Our research did not directly examine the “implemented curriculum” but did look at the “achieved curriculum” (Tibbitts and Keet 2017),1 according to students. Looking more deeply within the scholarship and practice of HRE are questions about how universal concepts of rights can be made relevant for local contexts. This “localisation” of human rights can be viewed as instrumental for learning human rights; in other words, learners will be more likely to understand and appreciate the meaning of human rights if the latter are linked with issues and conditions familiar to learners. A “localisation” of human rights is also presumably necessary in order to engender action to defend, promote and guarantee human rights. In all probability, student knowledge about human rights issues is influenced by a myriad of factors, both in-school and out-of-school. In-school influences include HRE; here, we might imagine that teachers also make decisions about which human rights issues to address, which may be linked with local concerns. We assume that teachers and curriculum writers would tend towards human rights issues that, at least in part, reflect human rights concerns and conditions in the local community. In our study, students were queried about how much and by what teaching methodologies their school had influenced their thinking about human rights. They were also asked, in an open-ended question, to name up to five rights that they considered human rights.

1  The “implemented curriculum” pertains to the teaching and learning processes that take place in the classroom. “Achieved curriculum” pertains to student outcomes and can be captured in assessments, ranging potentially from those administered in the classroom to national standardised assessments or comparative studies (see Tibbitts and Keet 2017, p. 92).

54

F. Tibbitts et al.

Vernacularization of Teaching Methods Participatory methods are typically promoted in HRE to encourage engagement in learning and to cultivate “active skills” that might later be used in influencing others to respect human rights. In addition to the increased inclusion of human rights principles in educational materials worldwide (Russell and Suarez 2017), scholars have noted that HRE has moved from a legalistic approach to one that focuses on incorporating active student engagement through learner-­centred pedagogy (Bajaj 2012). Barton (2015) confirmed in his cross-national study of adolescents in Colombia, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the US that students learned about human rights from a variety of sources, including personal experience, schooling and the broader national discourse. Our survey asked students where they had learned about these themes (for example, in the classroom, in the school, outside of the school, etc.) as well as how (e.g., reading a textbook, watching a video, engaging in a social action project, etc.). Earlier research on HRE methodologies had shown a tendency towards content-­orientations vis-a-vis human rights, with infrequent use of project work, role playing and students’ direct involvement in proposing topics of discussion during lessons (Schulz et al. 2016, p. 172). Presumably, these approaches reflected the usual ways of working in the respective classrooms. Research carried out in the civic and citizenship education field can shed some light on the kinds of methodologies used in classrooms in different countries and their respective impact on student learning. The International Study of Civic and Citizenship Education (ICCS/IEA), a cross-national, large scale assessment on citizenship education in classrooms and schools for students age 14, has found a variety of methods in use. The most common methodologies identified in the 2016 ICCS/ IEA study were use of textbooks, lectures with students taking notes and discussions on current issues; approximately half of the classrooms also engaged in group work (Schulz et al. 2016, p. 172). The ICCS/IEA study primarily involves countries in Western and Eastern Europe and North and South America; Africa and Asia are not represented.2 Results have shown links between the types of methodologies used in the classroom and student engagement in civics issues. As with HRE, citizenship education can aim to do more than help students increase knowledge by also encouraging and preparing them to actively and responsibly participate in society. The ICCS/IEA study and others consistently show a positive relationship between participatory and interactive methodologies, such as open discussions, and learning civics/citizenship content (Andersson 2012; Persson 2015; Schulz et  al. 2016; Torney-Purta 2002). Moreover, students show a greater likelihood to participate in the community if given the opportunity to engage in co-/extracurricular

 ICCS 2016 gathered data from more than 94,000 students in their eighth year of schooling in about 3800 schools from 24 countries. Sixteen of those countries were from Europe, five from Latin America, and three from Asia. 2

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden…

55

activities and groups outside of the school as part of civic learning in schools (Schulz et al. 2016; Pizmony-Levy and Ostrow 2018). Further research using the quantitative data from the ICCE/IEA study suggests that, globally, an open classroom climate correlates with improvements in a students’ beliefs that they can achieve goals (self-efficacy) along with an increase in civic knowledge. These factors are in turn statistically significant in supporting “justice oriented” citizenship (e.g., spending voluntary time in the community, engaging with an NGO, collecting signatures for a petition and participating in a non-violent march, protests or rally) (Kahne et al. 2013). While civic content knowledge alone is important, the citizens’ faith and trust in government and their belief that they can understand and influence political affairs (political efficacy) that results from an open classroom climate has a stronger relationship to an action-oriented conception of citizenship. Other studies have found that civics education may compensate for parents’ disinterest in political issues and promote active citizenry (Neundorf et al. 2016). These findings are complex across countries, but the overall advantages of an open classroom climate are consistent (Knowles and McCafferty-Wright 2015). Teachers in different classrooms across national and cultural boundaries may adopt different teaching strategies in accordance with personal beliefs or local guidelines (Fogo 2014; Nygren 2011; Sandahl 2013; Teise and Alexander 2017; Welply 2019). Yet, across the range of social studies practices, student-centred and activity-based methodologies has been linked to good test performance among students (Saye and Social Studies Inquiry Research 2013). Studies of U.S. ninth-grade classrooms suggest that, in general, combinations of four main teaching methodologies are used: “traditional” or textbook-oriented teaching, active learning strategies, videos or films, and the creation of an open classroom climate. Building and maintaining an open classroom climate, particularly increasing student input and ownership, has proven to increase the effectiveness of the other methodologies. Results also reveal that the combinations of methodologies best suited to increase internal efficacy differ from those that promote other outcomes of citizenship education, pointing to the need for explicitly empowerment-oriented methods (Martens and Gainous 2013). Thus, when it comes to fostering democratic citizenship competencies creating an open classroom climate is most likely to have an impact on student attitudes. Based on this earlier literature, we expected to find a mixture of methodologies in use in HRE classrooms. At the same time, we would be particularly attentive to indications that the lessons were taught in ways that promoted open discussion and active learning.

Vernacularization of Taking Action As mentioned in the previous section, active teaching methodologies for citizenship education have been linked with students’ inclination to become engaged in their community or groups outside the school. In Western contexts, students who have practiced civic skills, such as letter writing and debating, in a classroom setting are

56

F. Tibbitts et al.

more likely to be involved in advocacy activities outside of the classroom. These skills, as well as open classroom discussions, have demonstrated a stronger relationship to civic participation than simply following news and current affairs (Andolina et al. 2003). The ICCE/IEA study noted that student involvement in such activities outside the classroom is dependent upon the availability of such options. Thus, the availability and respectability of local civil society groups and local government may influence civic engagement. This potentially speaks to differences across local and national contexts, and ways that one might expect students to act on their interests. Students with good content knowledge regarding human rights may not have the strongest will to actively act for human rights (Human Rights Education Associates and Müller 2009). However, different pedagogies can promote different forms of civic participation (Kahne et al. 2013). Open discussions on social issues, for example, may increase participation in elections and other political activities. Service learning, on its turn, has been shown to increase community-based forms of participation and expression. While both pedagogies support participatory citizenship, such findings add nuance to the kinds of experiences that influence the development of adolescents’ views and expressions of citizenship (Kahne et al. 2013). This literature points to the links between pedagogy and civic education outcomes that are relevant for HRE. The studies also reveal that different forms of civic engagement are natural. This is treated in both theoretical and empirical studies of citizenship education. Secondary studies of the ICCS/IEA data have looked at youth support and involvement in “conventional citizenship” (e.g., voting in national elections, joining a political party, writing a letter about a social or political concern) and youth support and involvement in “justice oriented” citizenship. Activist orientation has been defined by an individual’s propensity to engage in social, political, and other collective problem-solving processes, whether they be of low or high risk, conventional or unconventional. This propensity is developed, yet malleable, which supports the research that social movement citizenship can be nurtured through certain civic education activities (Corning and Myers 2002). Other analyses have shown relationships between student background and their support for social movements. In his analysis of the IEA Civic Education study data from 1999, Pizmony-Levy (2006) found that females were more likely than males to support and participate in social movement citizenship than conventional citizenship; youth from disadvantaged backgrounds were also more likely to support social movements, though other analyses from the 2016 data showed female students less inclined than male students to anticipate political involvement in the future (Schulz et al. 2016). Civic engagement was also influenced by other factors including parental interest and students’ trust in civic institutions. The literature collectively suggests great complexity in terms of pedagogical choices, opportunities for students to engage in activities outside of the classroom, background factors influencing students’ interest in active engagement, and the very forms of engagement themselves. We argue, therefore, that these are all relevant dimensions for the vernacularization of HRE, which extend beyond the selection of

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden…

57

human rights themes and the use of participatory learning methods. Data from this study allow us to explore this complexity in different North-South contexts.

Methodology This chapter analyses the results of a survey completed by 715 upper secondary school students in India (154), South Africa (178), Sweden (231) and the United States (152). The survey was developed by an international team of experts on HRE, PE and ESD3 (including three of the authors) and was administered to students in fall 2017. The survey contained 28 open- and closed-ended questions. Questions were designed to provide varied student perspectives on what, how and why students learn about human rights, as well as peace and sustainability in schools. The latter two topics are not addressed in this chapter. The data analysed for the purposes of this chapter included those assigned to the “human rights” section of the survey. Students were asked to name human rights and important activities to promote them, and to indicate if and how they had learned about human rights in school and to what degree this education had influenced their views on human rights. Closed-ended questions regarding teaching methodologies were developed with inspiration from previous research in the US? on students perspectives on teaching and learning in social studies (Wanzek et al. 2015). In conversations with teachers and experts across national borders, we adjusted the options and added dimensions to include methodologies of teachers in non-American contexts and more student active and human rights related methodologies (see Tables 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6). The questionnaires were administered through non-random, convenience sampling to upper secondary school students aged 16–19. All the schools were selected as the associated researchers were aware that human rights were being taught in the school, either because it was required in the curriculum or being carried out at the discretion of the teacher. We cannot claim that the HRE these students received were representative of HRE received by other students in the country. Nevertheless, the perspectives of these students may provide insights into national educational and political cultures. Students completed questionnaires using Survey Monkey and these data were downloaded into Excel spreadsheets. A mixed methods approach to analysis was carried out in an iterative process to capture the richness of student responses (Tashakkori and Teddlie 2010). Codes for open-ended data were developed in three analytical stages. The first level involved open coding by one of the authors; this author then applied these initial codes to a subset of the surveys and refined the codes. Following a satisfactory calibration of the second set of codes for the original 3  The survey was developed as part of the project “The Complexity of Implementing Ideals of Global Citizenship: A Comparative Study of Human Rights, Peace and Sustainability in Education” led by Thomas Nygren, Uppsala University. The survey was developed by Thomas Nygren, Felisa Tibbitts and Judit Novak.

58

F. Tibbitts et al.

subset of surveys plus an additional set, coding was carried out by each of the national researchers. These codes were reviewed and then applied by researchers in other national sites who administered the same questionnaire and validated it for use in their context. Closed-ended items provided us with descriptive statistics for the survey results. In addition, statistical analysis was carried out in order to determine if there were any relationships between survey variables. We also carried out statistical analyses for statistically significant differences to explore any possible relationship between certain kinds of methodologies for learning human rights and the degree to which students ascribed their views on human rights to what they learned in school, as well as their views on how to promote human rights.

Results Table 3.1 below presents the grade level and gender of the students completing the survey, as well as whether one of the non-dominant languages of the country was spoken at home. The latter would likely reflect that the student belongs to a minority culture in the country or moved to the country. At least 90% of the students surveyed in each country indicated that they had learned about human rights in school.4 Yet, across the four countries, there were some differences in how much students felt that their experiences in the classroom or school had influenced their thinking about human rights. Figure 3.1 and Table 3.2 present these results, with the highest rating of this perceived impact having emerged in the U.S. and the lowest in Sweden. No statistical analysis was carried out to explore the relationship between the percentage of students who indicated that they had learned about human rights in school and the rating of the perceived influence of school on their thinking about human rights. However, we note that the relatively lower rating of the latter in Sweden coincides with a lower percentage of students indicating that they learned about human rights in school.

What Human Rights Students Know Students were prompted to write up to five rights they considered to be human rights. We coded these rights according to the rights listed in the UDHR. Answers that were not international human rights were coded as “other”. The results show that the vast majority of students in these classrooms named at least four human rights

 The statistics were India – 97%, South Africa – 96%, Sweden – 90% and US – 97%.

4

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden…

59

Table 3.1  Student demographics Country IN (N = 154) SA (N = 178) SW (N = 231) USA (N = 152)

Grade Level 9th 10th 28%  7% – – – 19% – –

11th 44%  9% 30% 43%

12th 21% 91% 48% 57%

Gender Female 52% 69% 57% 67%

Male 47% 30% 38% 30%

Other 1% 1% 5% 3%

Language spoken at home Non-dominant 96% 71% 31% 37%

Fig. 3.1  Influence of school/class on students’ thinking about human rights

correctly, though the Swedish students stood out by naming fewer human rights than their counterparts in the other countries (Fig. 3.2). In terms of the content of these human rights, we expected students to name rights reflecting concerns in their community or national environment, consistent with the literature. Table 3.3 presents the most popular human rights, with a rating of at least 40% or higher by one country. Some “unique” results showed up for individual countries. In India, non-­ discrimination and equality was mentioned as a human right by nearly every student. In South Africa, nearly 80% of the students mentioned right to education.5 Freedom of thought was mentioned twice as frequently by the U.S. students as by students in the other countries, consistent with the emphasis on civil and political 5  We did not carry out an environmental analysis that might explain these singularities but we do note that at the time the South African students were completing this questionnaire the “Fees Must Fall” social protests were taking place in the country, with university-age students demanding the right to (affordable) higher education.

60

F. Tibbitts et al.

Table 3.2  Average influence of school/class on students’ thinking about human rights (scale: 1–5)

Country India South Africa Sweden USA

Average rating 3.39 3.57 2.96 3.98

Fig. 3.2  Aggregate number of human rights listed Table 3.3  Human rights mentioned by students

Human rights according to the UDHR Right to decent standard of living, including food, clothing, housing, health care and right to security (esp. for sick, elderly, women and small children) (Article 25) Freedom of opinion and expression (Article 19) Right to life, liberty/freedom and/or security (one or all) (Article 3) Freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 18) Right to education (Article 26) Non-discrimination and equality (general) (Article 2)

Percentage of total students India S. Africa Sweden (n = 154) (n = 178) (n = 231) 34% 87% 86%

USA (n = 150) 66%

43%

63%

68%

69%

79%

67%

47%

39%

19%

19%

20%

47%

47% 98%

78% 15%

35% 28%

45% 22%

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden…

61

liberties in the country. Rights to a decent standard of living were mentioned by over 85% of the South Africans and Swedes, but far fewer Indians and a quarter of the Americans. These results suggest differences in the valuing of human rights, as both taught in the schools but also learned by students and reflecting local values and discourses (linked both with needs and expectations recognised by the students). Noticeable in their absence from the student lists were certain human rights. The right to seek and enjoy asylum was almost never mentioned by students, despite the international and national media coverage of refugees, in particular Syrian refugees, in the final quarter of 2017. Moreover, freedom from torture, inhumane, degrading treatment or punishment  – considered a core and immutable human rights standard – was at most mentioned by 3% of students in any given country. The results showed a minimal difference between countries in terms of listings of civil and political rights versus economic, social and cultural rights, with no more than a 4–5% difference. In other words, when looking more broadly at categories of human rights, we saw a balanced listing of both categories of human rights for all students, regardless of the country they lived in.

Teaching Methodologies Students were given a list of methodologies and asked to indicate which had been used when they learned human rights in school. Tables 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 present these results for each country, with the most popular teaching methodologies listed first. We note that for all the countries, except for the U.S., the most popular method used for learning human rights was the textbook. In India, the distant second in terms of teaching methodology (indicated by only 32% of the students) was participation in a class or small group discussion. Across all countries, we note a remarkable diversity of methods for learning human rights. This confirms earlier studies addressing the methodologies of HRE and citizenship education in different country contexts. As pointed out in the earlier literature review, open discussion and participatory methods were generally associated with “active citizenship education”, which seems relevant for HRE given its aim to promote respect for and action to uphold human rights. The most closely related methodologies in the survey list were “participated in class or small group discussion”, “presented arguments and different opinions”, “discussed controversial issues regarding human rights” (in the classroom), “did extracurricular activities”, and “personal involvement in a social action related to human rights” (outside of classroom). A focus on these methodologies shows that at least half of the students in all countries but India indicated that they had participated in discussions in the classroom. We note, however, that the U.S. students much more frequently indicated their participation in all of the methodologies linked with the literature on active citizenship. In order to better understand if and how specific methodologies may have been more influential in students learning human rights – in particular, those

62

F. Tibbitts et al.

Table 3.4  How students learned human rights in school: India (n = 154) Methodologies Read the textbook Participated in a class or small group discussion Answered questions from the teacher Took notes Listened to a lecture Watched a video on the topic Discussed controversial issues regarding human rights Read texts other than the textbook Presented arguments and different opinions Worked with a partner or small group Took a test Undertook a research-based inquiry Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights Worked individually on an assignment Did extracurricular activities

% of Total 68% 32% 30% 28% 27% 24% 21% 18% 14% 12% 12% 11% 8%

Frequency 104 49 46 43 42 37 33 27 22 18 18 17 13

8%

13

7% 6%

11 9

Table 3.5  How students learned human rights in school: South Africa (n = 178) Methodologies Read the textbook Answered questions from the teacher Participated in a class or small group discussion Took notes Took a test Read texts other than the textbook Discussed controversial issues regarding human rights Presented arguments and different opinions Worked individually on an assignment Watched a video on the topic Worked with a partner or small group Listened to a lecture Undertook a research-based inquiry Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Did extracurricular activities Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights

% of Total 76% 60% 54% 49% 47% 44% 44% 42% 41% 36% 33% 31% 26% 23% 11% 10%

Frequency 135 106 96 88 84 79 78 74 72 64 58 55 47 41 20 18

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden… Table 3.6  How students learned human rights in school: Sweden (n = 231) Methodologies Read the textbook Participated in a class or small group discussion Answered questions from the teacher Took notes Watched a video on the topic Worked individually on an assignment Read texts other than the textbook Worked with a partner or small group Discussed controversial issues regarding human rights Presented arguments and different opinions Listened to a lecture Took a test Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights Did extracurricular activities Undertook a research-based inquiry

% of Total 62% 61% 47% 47% 45% 39% 36% 36% 32% 32% 30% 25% 23%

Frequency 143 140 109 108 105 89 84 84 74 73 70 57 54

9%

21

7% 7%

17 16

Table 3.7  How students learned human rights in school: United States (n = 143) Methodologies Participated in a class or small group discussion Watched a video on the topic Discussed controversial issues regarding human rights Listened to a lecture Answered questions from the teacher Worked individually on an assignment Read texts other than the textbook Took notes Presented arguments and different opinions Worked with a partner or small group Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Read the textbook Did extracurricular activities Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights Undertook a research-based inquiry Took a test

% of Total 91% 88% 81% 70% 69% 66% 65% 59% 59% 57% 52%

Frequency 130 126 116 100 98 94 93 85 84 81 75

39% 36% 29%

55 52 41

26% 16%

37 23

63

64

F. Tibbitts et al.

Table 3.8  Frequency of student mentions of open discussion and participatory methodologies Methodologies Participated in a class or small group discussion Discussed controversial issues regarding human rights Presented arguments and different opinions Did extracurricular activities Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights

India (n = 154) 32%

S. Africa (n = 178) 54%

Sweden (n = 231) 61%

USA (n = 143) 91%

21%

44%

32%

81%

14%

42%

32%

59%

6% 8%

11% 10%

7% 9%

36% 29%

examined more closely in Table 3.8 – we looked for a statistical significance between students mentioning particular HRE methodologies and their indicating that schools had been influential on their learning human rights. Our thinking was that this analysis would show which of the teaching methods were particularly influential for students learning human rights. The results of this analysis are presented for each country in Table 3.9 below. These results reveal that there were two methodologies statistically significant for learning human rights that cut across all four countries: “participated in a class or small group discussion” and “worked with a partner or small group”. This result is consistent with the literature that has highlighted the importance of open discussion in active citizenship education. Yet these findings re-confirm that a range of teaching methodologies contributed to students’ perceptions of learning human rights. So-called traditional methodologies, such as listening to a lecture or taking notes, were experienced as particularly helpful for students learning human rights in certain contexts. For all the countries excepting the U.S., “took a test” contributed significantly to these students learning human rights.

Most Important Activities to Promote Human Rights The students were asked to indicate ways in which they thought human rights could be promoted. These answers were coded according to 12 categories, which were then combined into three distinct modalities: education and learning; social action; influencing government. The results are presented in Table 3.10. The results show that the most popular ways to promote human rights across all four countries related to education and learning. We speculate that these results can be partly explained by experiences that the students have themselves had in school, including learning about human rights, having discussions and expressing one’s point of view. We also note how education today is often described on a global level as key to solve issues of human rights (Tibbitts and Katz 2018). The category of taking some form of social action, including working with non-governmental

3  Insights from Students on Human Rights Education in India, South Africa, Sweden…

65

Table 3.9  Mean rating of overall influence of school on human rights thinking by methodology Methodology India Worked with a partner or small group Did extracurricular activities Undertook a research-based inquiry Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Took a test Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights Worked individually on an assignment Presented arguments and different opinions Watched a video on the topic Read texts other than the textbook Listened to a lecture Participated in a class or small group discussion Took notes Answered questions from the teacher South Africa Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Worked with a partner or small group Watched a video on the topic Undertook a research-based inquiry Read texts other than the textbook Took notes Took a test Participated in a class or small group discussion Read the textbook Sweden Personal involvement in a social action related to human rights Did extracurricular activities Discussed controversial issues regarding human rights

Mean rating of students who experienced method

Mean rating of students who did not experience method

4.82∗∗∗

3.25

4.75∗∗∗ 4.7∗∗∗

3.3 3.28

4.46∗∗∗

3.27

4.42∗∗∗ 4.33∗∗

3.28 3.29

4.33∗∗

3.32

4.28∗∗∗

3.24

4.06∗∗∗ 4.05∗∗∗ 4.03∗∗∗ 4∗∗∗

3.16 3.26 3.13 3.12

3.8∗∗ 3.76∗∗

3.24 3.24

4.33∗∗∗

3.31

4.22∗∗∗

3.2

4.17∗∗∗ 4.13∗∗∗

3.18 3.33

4.11∗∗∗ 3.97∗∗∗ 3.95∗∗ 3.89∗∗

3.08 3.05 3.17 3.12

3.78∗∗

2.48

3.52∗∗

2.9

3.5∗∗ 3.39∗∗∗

2.91 2.71 (continued)

66

F. Tibbitts et al.

Table 3.9 (continued) Methodology Listened to a lecture Took a test Worked individually on an assignment Worked with a partner or small group Took notes Critically scrutinised information and different opinions Participated in a class or small group discussion Presented arguments and different opinions Read texts other than the textbook Watched a video on the topic Answered questions from the teacher United States Worked with a partner or small group Answered questions from the teacher Watched a video on the topic Participated in a class or small group discussion

Mean rating of students who experienced method 3.31∗∗∗ 3.31∗∗ 3.31∗∗∗

Mean rating of students who did not experience method 2.78 2.82 2.68

3.28∗∗∗

2.73

3.27∗∗∗ 3.24∗∗

2.61 2.86

3.24∗∗∗

2.36

3.24∗∗

2.81

3.24∗∗∗ 3.23∗∗∗ 3.21∗∗∗

2.76 2.68 2.67

4.15∗∗

3.8

4.09∗∗

3.8

4.09∗∗ 4.06∗∗

3.48 3.52

Notes: ∗∗p