Science Education as a Human Right: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

Basing school and university science education on an understanding of science education as a human right has been advocated by numerous authors. Broadly, the right to science education derives from the fundamental rights included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely the right to education and the right to science. The aim of the present study was to characterize the right to science education in greater detail and specify its conditions and barriers. To meet this aim, we conducted a systematic literature review entailing a bibliographic database search of the Web of Science and ProQuest and an article screening followed by a qualitative content analysis of the included publications. In doing so, we synthesized the findings of eight publications addressing the right to science education in various contexts. In this paper, we present the design and results of our analysis. The implications of our findings for future science education research are outlined at the end of this paper.