Translating Transformative Human Rights Education through Visual Languages & Informal Spaces

This project examines methods, theories, and practices of translating human rights education through multiple vernaculars. Developed as a workshop in sociocultural syntax deconstruction and an educational human rights education website focused on the domestic population of the US, the project focuses on localizing human rights concepts to the public vernacular of the country. Human rights education (HRE) and media and information literacy (MIL) are expanded and redefined as social literacy, or the ability to navigate and decode the present, complex realities that both HRE and MIL were developed to address. Reframing media and visual arts as an archive of past and present conceptualizations of memory and narrative formations, the project explores educational methods and theories of adapting human rights concepts into public spaces

Beyond Carceral Solutions : Using Transformative Human Rights Education in Domestic Violence Prevention

Domestic violence is a choice a person makes to gain and exert absolute power and control over another person. Unfortunately, the predominant structure for addressing domestic violence - the criminal justice system - is rife with problematic social and structural constructs, like patriarchy, white supremacy, and neoliberalism, which are themselves rooted in issues of power and control (Acheson, 2022). The influence of these factors, which are largely defined by exploitative hierarchies, helps to explain why domestic violence remains prevalent. To more effectively address and prevent domestic violence, research suggests that comprehensive policy and curricular reform are necessary on multiple levels of the socio-ecology (Lorettu et al., 2021). When the primary intervention for domestic violence reproduces oppressive conditions, alternatives are needed. Domestic violence preventionists must seek community-based measures in order to divest from the carceral system. Through an abolitionist, feminist perspective, this field project explores the preventative and, in some cases, healing possibilities offered by transformative human rights education. To aid in these efforts, this field project is a handbook that intends to provide guidance to facilitators of violence prevention in creating what I call “Community Action and Transformation (CAT) groups” that hold space for both trauma and joy and allow community members to learn about, practice, and implement freedom

Indigenous Rights Education (IRE): Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Transformative Human Rights in the Peruvian Andes

This article focuses on the relationship between Indigenous places, rights, and education. In the context of the Peruvian Andes, historical ideological impositions reveal the trajectory of environmental exploitation, which have contributed to major ecological threats that collectively contribute to the aggressive re-making of the Andean world as sacrificed lands. With a focus on Quechua peoples, the link between Indigenous knowledge systems and human rights education is explored. Drawing from discourses of Indigenous rights, place, rights, and transformative human rights education, Indigenous rights education (IRE) is proposed

How research into citizenship education at university might enable transformative human rights education

This article presents a new research design for pedagogical research at university. The design demonstrates how personal and cultural citizenship education can be a form of transformative human rights education by nurturing citizens who challenge patterns of exclusion. It draws on shared traditions of citizenship and human rights education that have focused on lived experiences of injustice and uses spaces that mitigate prevailing power structures. These ideas have shaped a new pedagogical action research design that uses theories andpractices of transformational learning, authentic reflection, and participatory theatre to stimulate ‘becomings’ in civic identity and agency. ‘Becoming’ is a form of dialogical knowledge arising from profound moments of empathy and solidarity. In these moments participants recognise the human dignity of excluded others and share experiences of injustice, which expands their sense of community and agency. The research design is a potential alternative to more market-driven global citizenship education at university

Challenges and possibilities for transformative human rights education in Icelandic upper secondary schools

Transformative human rights education (HRE) implies a pedagogic intention to generate human rights cultures, protecting against and preventing human rights violations. This article draws on Freirean critical pedagogy to define transformative HRE as requiring four pedagogical principles: an explicit pedagogic intention; critical engagement on purposes of education; a critical holistic approach; and cosmopolitan perspectives. A thematic analysis of ten upper secondary school teachers’ narratives on working with human rights in Iceland reveals reliance on tacit rather than explicit pedagogical intentions, a lack of critical engagement on purposes of education, and limited opportunities to develop human rights and HRE knowledge, inhibiting a critical holistic approach and cosmopolitan perspectives. However, the narratives offer content and contexts that provide possibilities to develop the four pedagogical principles required for transformative HRE through processes of critical relational dialogue. This paper raises questions of significance for teacher education in Iceland and internationally

Citizenship and Transformative Human Rights Education: Surveys as ‘Praxis’ in the São Paulo Periphery

In Latin America, citizenship is often viewed as a struggle for rights and has often been won through ground-up movements. For this reason, a transformative human rights education framework is useful for considering the roles and processes of citizenship education in Latin America. Using a case study of a programme that teaches about the right to education to disadvantaged youth from the São Paulo periphery, this article also highlights the use of surveys as a Frereian pedagogical tool in transformative human rights and citizenship education