Research context

In 2005, the United Nations (UN) launched the World Programme for Human Rights Education (HRE), a project to advance the implementation of C/HRE (Children/Human Rights Education) in all sectors, including Higher Education. C/HRE offers experiential learning processes to inform active and global citizenship (Spreen & Monaghan, 2017) and promote social justice (Dunhill, 2016). The UNCRC (UN, 1989) sets clear indications of the requirement for both children and educators / practitioners to receive CRE. The lack of an agreed framework for its delivery and the absence of rights education in the statutory requirements for practitioners’ training make the provision of CRE challenging and patchy (Jerome, 2018).

In 2015, UNICEF published a report on the status of children’s rights in teacher training in Higher Education in twenty-six countries (Jerome et al., 2015). The report highlighted that only one country - Scotland, included CRE requirements in initial teacher training. In Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), due to problematic training status and lower recognised social standing (Moss 2014; Robson, 2016), requirements for CRE to be incorporated in training are even patchier and unregulated. Meaningful and impactful CRE requires trained, rights-informed and respecting practitioners (Gillett-Swan and Sargeant, 2018).

The research project that informed the writing of this paper aimed to identify and map Children’s Rights Education curricula in Education and Early Childhood Education and Care undergraduate programmes in Europe.

Research topic and question

The inclusion and delivery of Children’s Rights Education (as form of Human Right Education) in the university education/training of perspective educators in Europe is the focus of the project presented in this paper.  The research question addressed in this paper is the exploration of the models of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) (Felten & Chick, 2018) for CRE curricula in Education/ECEC programmes.

The data analysed and discuss in this paper was collected through narrative inquiry dialogues with academic staff teaching CRE in undergraduate Education/ECEC programmes in European Higher Education Institutions.

The paper has two aims:

1. Discuss principles and factors informing and regulating the inclusion/delivery of CRE in Education/ECEC programmes in the context of Global Education

2. Map the teaching and the adopted models of scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) for CRE curricula in Education/ECEC programmes in the context of Global Education

The data was collected through reflective narrative inquiries with individual educators in Higher Education. Each dialogue took place online, on Teams, lasted between 40minutes to 1 hr and was recorded and transcribed for analysis. Transcripts were coded through framework analysis, adopting the four domains of teaching and learning identified in the theorisation of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) model (Felten & Chick, 2018) as codes of reference. The four domains are: content, process, premise (Kreber, 2005), and relation (Dewey, 1979). Whilst the first three spheres focused on the exploration of participants’ reflections on the processes (Felten, 2013), the fourth domain allowed the investigation of the intended/perceived transformative impact of the scholarship of teaching and learning (Mezirow, 1991). Through the processes of analysis, the data was organised to identify emerging and recurrent features, practices and strategies adopted in developing and delivering the different CRE curricula.

The paper will discuss the elements identified as recurrent features, practices and strategies adopted in developing and delivering the different CRE/HRE curricula in Higher Education. An expected outcome of the paper is a discussion on the feasibility of the development of a shared framework for CRE/HRE in Higher Education. The findings contribute to the field of Children's Rights Education in the specific area of Teaching & Learning Scholarship in Higher Education. The paper will develop further opportunities for dialogue and networking to continue and extend the mapping of frameworks, curricula, and policy requirements for CRE in HE undergraduate degrees. This paper aims to provide a basis to develop further research for grounding the formation of Education and ECEC students within a rights-based approach.

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