Student Teachers Coping with Changing Times: The Intersection of Student-Teachers’ Understanding of Human Rights Issues and Their Cultural Identity

Abstract

Migration into the European Union and the growing need to deal with refugees in established school systems call into question the preparation of student-teachers as prospective learning facilitators for social cohesion. In Germany, the explicit implementation efforts of human rights education aim at strengthening the role of student-teachers as learning facilitators for a critical analysis of human rights in society. The objective of this chapter is to lay the ground for a theory of human rights literacies for teacher education that offers student-teachers discursive space(s) to engage in dialogue on their understandings of human rights issues. In particular, cultural identity (CI) in the conceptualisation of hybrid versus mono-CI might influence understandings of human rights. After concepts of human rights education, human rights literacies and cultural identity are introduced, the role of human rights education in the German education system will be analysed. Results of an exploratory study on human rights understandings with a small sample of student-teachers from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) are discussed. We identify challenges of human rights literacies in German teacher education with special reference to its intersection with CI and distinguish three discursive spaces for the conceptualization of human rights literacies in Germany.