Abstract
This article reports on research in three secondary schools in England where students were engaged in deliberative discussion of controversial issues. The teaching resources used illustrated rights-based dilemmas and the data analysis focused on the nature of the talk and the types of knowledge the students drew upon to inform their discussions. The article shares four insights: (i) there is a need to be more explicit about what constitutes human rights knowledge; (ii) human rights education requires the development of political understanding, which moves beyond individual empathy; (iii) educators need to value the process of deliberative discussions and avoid a push for conclusive answers; (iv) students need support to draw on knowledge from a range of disciplines. If these issues are not addressed, some students are able to engage in rights-based discussions with little knowledge and understanding of rights.
Highlights
The starting point for this article is Parker’s challenge to human rights educators that we need to be more explicit about what knowledge might sit at the heart of a curriculum for human rights education (HRE) (Parker, 2018)
This article reports on research in three secondary schools in England where students were engaged in deliberative discussion of controversial issues
The article shares four insights: (i) there is a need to be more explicit about what constitutes human rights knowledge; (ii) human rights education requires the development of political understanding, which moves beyond individual empathy; (iii) educators need to value the process of deliberative discussions and avoid a push for conclusive answers; (iv) students need support to draw on knowledge from a range of disciplines
Summary
The starting point for this article is Parker’s challenge to human rights educators (in the first edition of this journal) that we need to be more explicit about what knowledge might sit at the heart of a curriculum for human rights education (HRE) (Parker, 2018) He argued that HRE frameworks often leave this issue relatively open and unexplored. Parker’s discussion focuses on a number of issues but crucially observes there has been a kind of ‘knowledge blindness’ within HRE, where advocates tend to avoid engaging with questions about human rights knowledge He builds on Vygotsky’s distinction between the everyday knowledge that arises from reflection on experience, and more conceptual scientific knowledge, which has to be more consciously taught (Karpov, 2003). Despite curriculum theorists’ relative neglect of such issues, the importance of
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