Learning about, through and for Human Rights? Theorizing Human Rights Education

This paper explores different theoretical frameworks of human rights education (HRE) and aims to develop didactical approaches in line with three dimensions of HRE; learning about human rights, learning through human rights and learning for human rights. Although HRE are implemented in different contexts (Osler & Starkey, 2010; Mihr, 2009), how can such education create empowering and transformative learning processes and what may represent key components and theoretical premises which guide educators and learners in different settings of HRE practice? A key argument in favor of HRE is the following postulation, which represents the ‘skeleton’– we need to know our rights in order to enjoy and protect them. According to Spring (2004), human rights education is a tool for counteracting the industrial-consumer paradigm that governments lean on to use the school system for educating consumer citizens, workers for global economic competition and controlling the population to stay loyal and patriotic (Spring 2008, 2009). Osler & Starkey (2010) argues that HRE is primarily a cosmopolitan approach to education, with both horizontal and vertical dimensions pointing to developing ties between people as well as holding governments and other powerful institutions to account. Toivanen (2009) argues that HRE, seeking to question hierarchies, hegemonies and customs, is always about challenging governments and existing power structures, and hence represents a dilemma to its implementation in formal education which traditionally has been integral to the formation and consolidation of modern states. Following this, how can HRE play a role to develop active citizenship in local, national and global contexts? Through empirical material from qualitative interviews with teachers in upper secondary schools in Norway and theoretical perspectives, I discuss tendencies and approaches that shed light on these questions in order to contribute to a theoretical framework of HRE.