Perspectives on Reconciliation and Indigenous Rights

An analysis of Indigenous rights in the context of debates about human rights

Education for human rights: Opportunities and challenges arising from Australian curriculum reform

© Australian Curriculum Studies Association Incorporated 2016. This paper examines the place of human rights education in Australian schools in the light of the National Curriculum’s implementation and unprecedented educational and social/geopolitical change. It also draws on, as part of its literature base, the first nationwide initiative to assess the Australian community’s views on human rights issues by the National Human Rights Consultation Committee (NHRCC, 2009), undertaken by the authors. With global events and technologies challenging previously accepted norms of behaviour, it is vital to consider how school educators can play a more effective role in enabling students to learn about human rights. To support a discussion about the opportunities and challenges facing teachers and students, the paper provides background on the development of a human rights education agenda in Australia. It draws on recent studies that analyse legislation, education policy, curriculum documents, and a set of roundtable consultations. In response to difficult political and community contexts, it is our aim to raise the profile of human rights education and prompt discussion on how to progress it in schools

Educating teachers about human rights: building a rights based culture in Australian schools

© 2016 Australian Teacher Education Association. A well-educated active citizenry is the primary aim of our education systems. An essential component of a well-educated citizenry in a civil society is its understanding of the value of human rights and what it means to live with dignity in a community, where rights and freedoms are protected. This paper uses evidence from international and national reports and programmes to argue that HRE should be an essential component of the curriculum in Australian schools. It draws on data from the first national cross-sectoral Australian study investigating the place of HRE in the school curriculum. There is a need for both pre-service and in-service teachers to have focused professional training, in order to better engage students to be critically aware of the importance of developing a human rights culture within a school; also, to adopt a transformative “whole school” approach linked to local, national, and global communities

Translating Public Policy: Enhancing the Applicability of Social Impact Techniques for Grassroots Community Groups

This paper reports on an exploratory action research study designed to understand how grassroots community organisations engage in the measurement and reporting of social impact and how they demonstrate their social impact to local government funders. Our findings suggest that the relationships between small non-profit organisations, the communities they serve or represent and their funders are increasingly driven from the top down formalised practices. Volunteer-run grassroots organisations can be marginalized in this process. Members may lack awareness of funders strategic approaches or the formalized auditing and control requirements of funders mean grassroots organisations lose capacity to define their programs and projects. We conclude that, to help counter this trend, tools and techniques which open up possibilities for dialogue between those holding power and those seeking support are essentia

Human Rights and History Education: An australian study

The place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum remains contested and this paper reports on the first national crosssectoral investigation of its place in Australian curricula and more specifically in national and state History curriculum documents. Opportunities for the inclusion of human rights based studies were examined across school learning stages, taking into account explicit and implicit, compulsory or elective, as well as curricular and extra-curricular dimensions. Given the continued importance of History as a learning area, there is a need to strengthen the available explicit and mandatory opportunities for students to learn about human rights issues, working closely with key teacher associations, non-government agencies and supportive networks, drawing on available educational technologies

Dealing with Difference: Building Culturally Responsive Classrooms

Australia continues to develop as a multicultural society with levels of immigration increasing significantly in recent years. The current financial turmoil, continuing threats from terrorism and environmental concerns, have all intensified the challenges of dealing with difference in our society. In response, schools continue to face the challenges of the impact of a range of different cultures, languages and religions among their student and school communities. How effectively schools deal with difference and how well they are supported in their endeavours to build culturally responsive classrooms is a perennial issue for policy makers, teachers and teacher educators. A major challenge for teachers in particular, is to at a minimum, understand cultural differences as they manifest in their particular school settings. Also to draw on approaches that support student learning in culturally appropriate ways so to assist them to better realise their full potential. In this paper we will consider cultural diversity in the context of current school policies, and highlight a number of frameworks for addressing cultural diversity in the classroom. We draw on the findings from a recent qualitative study of representations of cultural diversity in a number of Sydney schools to discuss the need for greater resource and policy support for progressive and innovative teaching approaches that will support the development of inclusive communities

What you do Matters: Demostrate your Community Impact

A 'tool kit' for small grass roots organisations seeking to report their social impact to their funding organisation

Refreshing critical pedagogy and citizenship education through the lens of justice and complexity pedagogy

© The Author(s) 2018. Maximal citizenship educators are committed to advancing an approach to citizenship learning with the following staple features: learner-centred; experiential; problem- and action-oriented; racialised, classed and gendered analysis of power; and strengthening the public sphere and democracy. This type of approach to education shares many similarities with the principles of critical pedagogy. However, there have been valid arguments that Frankfurt School Critical Theory inspired pedagogy still tends to focus on class, at the expense of gender and race, analyses. This article seeks ways to refresh and extend the language and theoretical frameworks used by critical pedagogues. To do so, it will deploy the terms justice pedagogy and complexity pedagogy. The adjective ‘justice’ does the same work as ‘critical’ in signalling the commitment to using education as a means to bring about a more socially just world. The recent rise in scholarship in complexity thinking lends itself to conceptualising critical pedagogy in necessarily fresh ways. This article draws attention to the kindred nature of guiding concepts in complexity thinking and critical pedagogy, including grassroots organising, distributed decision-making and emergent learning, before presenting a description of how such approaches might refresh critical pedagogy through a critical citizenship education programme using justice pedagogy. This example illustrates the way that justice pedagogy can inform decisions about appropriate teaching and learning strategies for children and young people today growing up in an increasingly globalised world

Inconsistency in asylum appeal adjudication

Open access journalNew research findings indicate that factors such as the gender of the judge and of the appellant, and where the appellant lives, are influencing asylum appeal adjudication.Economic and Social Research Counci