Human Rights and Schooling

Most of the struggles for equitable schooling, including multicultural curricula and culturally responsive teaching, have largely taken place on a local or national stage, with little awareness of how international human rights standards might support these struggles. Human Rights and Schooling explores the potential of human rights frameworks to support grassroots struggles for justice and examines the impact that human rights and child rights education can make in the lives of students, including the most marginalized. The author, Audrey Osler, examines the theory, research, and practice linking human rights to education in order to broaden the concept of citizenship and social studies education. Bringing scholarship and practice together, the text uses concrete examples to illustrate the links between principles and ideals and actual efforts to realize social justice in and through education. Osler anchors her examination of human rights in the U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training.

Book Features:

• Supports teachers in their everyday struggles for social justice.
• Contributes to theory and practice in human rights education.
• Advocates for greater international solidarity and cooperation in multicultural education.
• Explores how the concept of child rights can strengthen education for democracy.

Audrey Osler is professor of education at the University College of Southeast Norway and at the University of Leeds, UK, where she was founding director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights Education (CCHRE).

"Audrey Osler's new book brings astonishing depth, a global scope, a critical perspective, and the commanding authority of an international scholar who had studied and participated in the struggle for human rights across many years and a variety of local contexts."

—Theory & Research in Social Education

"Audrey Osler’s new book, Human Rights and Schooling, explores the possibilities of education as a vehicle for building freedom, justice and peace at home and

throughout the world."

—London Review of Education

"In her timely and relevant book, Human Rights and Schooling: An Ethical Framework for Teaching for Social Justice, Audrey Osler offers us a theoretically grounded, yet practical way to address social justice through human rights education (HRE) in our classrooms and beyond."

—Teachers College Record

“This book is a testament to the many ways Osler has actively engaged in education for, about, and on, human rights, and has passionately advocated education for social justice. The book demonstrates not only the diversity within the field, but also the diversity of projects across Osler’s professional career and adds to the growing literature at the intersection of HRE and education for multicultural or cosmopolitan citizenship. I recommend it to those looking to deepen their understandings about the current debates facing the field of HRE.”

—International Journal of Children’s Rights

"Osler’s book equips educators with a historical and theoretical foundation

along with a toolkit to help make HRE practical, accessible, and engaging

for all learners."

—International Journal of Human Rights Education

"One of the salient points made in Human Rights and Schooling is that human rights is not about the other in distant lands but it is about all of us and the everyday lives of students and teachers. Osler also provides teachers and students with a legal and moral framework that can be used to guide the analysis of human rights issues in classroom discussions and deliberations."

—SirReadaLot.org

"Osler’s book provides an important means for reforming discourses and schools to support the development of democratic, socially just, and cosmopolitan communities. Osler wrote, 'In practice, a right is only a right if people know about it and if they are prepared to struggle for it' (p. 44, emphasis in original). This struggle is not an abstract principle that students discuss but an on- the- ground struggle that every community can identify as a means toward social justice within their community."

—Democracy & Education

“Audrey Osler offers timely and relevant insights into education for human rights and social justice. The book examines complex global realities and the power of narrative to create a grounded and critical cosmopolitanism.”
—Monisha Bajaj, associate professor, International and Multicultural Education, University of San Francisco

“Educators specializing in social studies/civic education, multicultural, comparative, and/or social justice education will find Audrey Osler’s Human Rights and Schooling a fascinating read. It is filled with practical strategies for teaching about, in, and for human rights. In her wide-ranging discussion of concepts such as cosmopolitan citizenship, intersectionality and identity, and narrative, Osler draws on examples from across the globe to show how educators can foster solidarity with human rights struggles near and far as they empower youth to take action for social justice at home and abroad.”
—Carole L. Hahn, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Educational Studies, Emory University