Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE) - Volume 23 - Issue 1 - Suggestions for Critical Awareness, Accountability, and Transformation in Human Rights Education

Oct 15, 2026

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Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE) publishes a study addressing human rights education as an emerging but powerful institution within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights framework. The article evaluates how HRE’s legal mandate and global dissemination can reproduce Western ideology and epistemic hegemony, despite claims of learner agency. Building on Tibbitts’ revised typologies, it proposes critical, disruptive pedagogies for teaching, for, and through human rights, drawing examples of critical practice worldwide.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Purpose and legal mandate of Human Rights Education

Challenges to universality and cultural relevance

Global institutions shaping HRE

Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE), Volume 23, Issue 1, Winter 2021 Suggestions for Critical Awareness, Accountability, and Transformation in Human Rights Education William J. Foley Jr. Teachers College, Columbia University Human Rights Education exists as an implementing entity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Scholars such as Andre Keet and others have criticized the dissemination of universal rights through education because it covets Western ideology over local ethical and epistemological constructs. Using Tibbitts’ revised typologies of Human Rights Education, this paper offers suggestions for critical pedagogy for the teaching of, for, and through Human Rights. These suggestions are drawn from examples of critical practice from throughout the world. Introduction Human Rights Education (HRE) is a powerful, if nascent, institution that is spreading throughout the world as a crucial piece of the Human Rights framework (Russell & Suárez, 2017) . This rapid dissemination across education requires that practitioners and researchers critically evaluate the purpose, pedagogy, and power that creates HRE. Curriculum is often guided by the legal standards of the state that is implementing education, this formulates the basis of many national curricula. HRE differs from other curricula in that it is set by law to instruct people on the multinational parameters from which other laws should stem. Entrenched in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), HRE propels itself and the document it derives from as a normalizing function. The teaching of human rights is a legal mandate that ensures compliance with the standards outlined by international law. The legal presuppositions of the UDHR offer the risk that its prescriptions are not suitable for every context. Indeed, it is arguable that the UDHR is a tool for Western political and (especially through HRE) epistemic hegemony (Keet, 2014) . Thus, HRE may purport learner-agency through the dissemination of the Rights enshrined bylaw, while actually enhancing the control of Western ideologies over local beliefs (Keet, 2014) . The risk for HRE to promote hegemony has sparked an interest in disruptive and critical HRE pedagogies that seek to redress power structures through activism and teaching. A critical evaluation of HRE may begin by analyzing why HRE is taught. Tibbitts and Fernekes (2011) point out that HRE is specifically to promote the UDHR. The uniqueness of HRE is that it does not find its origins the nation-state. The ideology that UDHR represents is not exclusive to one place, but sprawling method for asserting what Keet (2015) recognizes as very specific interests. Those interest are spelled out in the UDHR (1948) which states: “every individual and every organ of society (…) shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and the freedomsand by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance”(page) . This preamble clearly articulates that signatories to the Declaration are charged with education for the sake of the legal rights that are so enshrined. The UDHR (1948) admits that there is a need to teach © 2021, Current Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Current Issues in Comparative Education 23(1), 77-89. Foley about Human Rights making it a demand for a specific curricular focus. It seems assumed that the protection of the rights as enumerated rests on the ability of people to know what they are and to know that they can want to demand them. These interests have very real mechanisms that use HRE to promote the UDHR. While schooling is often a tool wielded through power to assert commonalities across the nation state, the UDHR had many levers through which HRE flow. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Amnesty International, the Orga

FAQs

What is Human Rights Education (HRE) presented as in the article?

HRE is described as a powerful, still developing institution spreading worldwide as part of the Human Rights framework grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Why does the article question the universality of the UDHR as taught through HRE?

It argues the UDHR’s prescriptions may not fit every context and can function as a tool for Western political and epistemic hegemony, influencing local beliefs through education.

What approach does the paper propose for teaching human rights?

It offers suggestions for critical pedagogy for teaching, for, and through human rights, using examples from critical practice across the world to address power structures.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by nayy☆