Attitude of the Students, Teachers and Educational Administrators for Incorporating Human Rights Education in Secondary School Curriculum

Tapan Kumar Basantia

doi:10.32861/jssr.66.623.632

Abstract

After the World War-II, human rights education has become an increasingly visible feature of the educational policies, debates and foundations at international level. Steps have been taken by various nations to incorporate human rights education in their school curriculum. In India, a few studies have been conducted in the context of incorporating human rights education in school curriculum in general and in secondary school curriculum in particular. In the present study, an attempt was made to study the attitude of the students, teachers and educational administrators for incorporating human rights education in secondary school curriculum. The study mainly focused to compare the attitude of the students, teachers and educational administrators for incorporating human rights education in secondary school curriculum, and to identify certain basic content areas of human rights education that may/should have a place in secondary school curriculum. The study was considered under descriptive survey-cum-content analysis research. The participants of the study included 640 students, 256 teachers and 88 educational administrators under secondary schools of Bihar, India. A self-developed attitude scale titled ‘Attitude scale for studying the attitude for incorporating human rights education in secondary school curriculum’ was used for collecting data from participants for the study. Both the quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis were employed for analyzing the collected data of the study. The study mainly revealed that among the entire sample studied, the students possessed better attitude than teachers and educational administrators for incorporating human rights education in secondary school curriculum. Further, the study helped to identify certain basic content areas of human rights education that may/should have a place in secondary school curriculum.

Highlights

The effective management of secondary schools in Nigeria is one of the means through which educational goals can be attained
The subjects are observed in their natural and unchanged natural environment. This design was considered most appropriate for this study because the study intends to investigate principal leadership variables such as leadership style, communication patterns, decision-making skills, and supervisory approaches and describe these phenomena of interest as they influence the dependent variable
The dependent variable was measured continuously at the interval scale of measurement. This made the researchers consider the one-way analysis of variance as the most appropriate statistical technique in comparing the means of undergraduates’ attitudes towards learning in schools where principals adopted these three leadership styles

Summary

Introduction

The effective management of secondary schools in Nigeria is one of the means through which educational goals can be attained. Little or nothing seems to be known at the moment regarding the reasons why there is an indifference in the attitudes of students after completing a practicum course In response to this gap, we designed this study to assess principals' leadership variables as the presumed cause of undergraduates' declining attitudes towards practicum exercise in secondary schools. Results: We find amongst others, that principals’ leadership styles, communication patterns, decision-making and supervisory approaches significantly predict undergraduates' attitudes towards practicum exercise relatively. Each of these independent variables accounts differently for the variance in the dependent variable based on their unique coefficient of determination.

Methods

Results

Conclusion