Abstract
Migration into the European Union and the growing need to deal with refugees in established school systems call into question the preparation of student-teachers as prospective learning facilitators for social cohesion. In Germany, the explicit implementation efforts of human rights education aim at strengthening the role of student-teachers as learning facilitators for a critical analysis of human rights in society. The objective of this chapter is to lay the ground for a theory of human rights literacies for teacher education that offers student-teachers discursive space(s) to engage in dialogue on their understandings of human rights issues. In particular, cultural identity (CI) in the conceptualisation of hybrid versus mono-CI might influence understandings of human rights. After concepts of human rights education, human rights literacies and cultural identity are introduced, the role of human rights education in the German education system will be analysed. Results of an exploratory study on human rights understandings with a small sample of student-teachers from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) are discussed. We identify challenges of human rights literacies in German teacher education with special reference to its intersection with CI and distinguish three discursive spaces for the conceptualization of human rights literacies in Germany.
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26 March 2019
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Notes
- 1.
In Germany, standards of human rights education have been developed by the Human Rights Forum (2005; an amalgamation of various human rights NGOs in Germany) to contribute to a “culture of human rights” as promoted by the UNESCO. With the standards of human rights education, the Forum seeks to substantiate the content of the GPJE (Association for Citizenship Education and Civic Youth and Adult Education) in the field of human rights. In this document, the outcome of human rights education is conceptualized as achievements of students at the end of certain grades in terms of human rights abilities and values. However, comparing the human rights education standards with the definition of human rights literacies by Roux and Becker (2017), the basic idea of discursive spaces is not included.
- 2.
In Germany the term “didactic” refers to the theory of teaching and learning. Didactics in the narrower sense deal with the theory of instruction (“Unterricht”), while didactics in the broader sense address the theory and practice of teaching and learning (“Lehren und Lernen”). Furthermore, in academic teacher education in Germany as well as in other European countries (e.g. Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Norway), one distinguishes between general and subject-related didactics. On the one hand, general didactics deal primarily with principles, teaching and learning models as well as justification issues of instructional processes—independent of the specific learning content (cf. Terhart, 2009).
- 3.
Complete range of response options of S2015Q17_DE: Declaration on Children’s rights, women’s rights, legal protection, government’s responsibility, United Nations, against a religious conviction, Bill of Rights, gender legislation, constitutions of nations, police protection.
- 4.
Complete range of response options of S2015Q18_DE: Freedom, tolerance, social justice, respect, protection, fairness, morality, responsibility, dignity, caring, entitlement, relationship, and selfishness.
- 5.
Complete range of response options of S2015Q54_DE: Knowledge of human rights, respecting human dignity, promoting gender equality, responsibility, dialogue about human rights issues, promoting understanding and friendship among different peoples, strengthening of respect for fundamental freedoms, social justice consciousness, inspiring action to defend and promote the rights of others, application of human rights in everyday life, understanding how a society should live together, knowing about mechanisms that protect human rights, understanding how human rights affect an individual, support legal understanding and moral disposition towards human rights.
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Jasper, J., Abs, H.J. (2019). Student Teachers Coping with Changing Times: The Intersection of Student-Teachers’ Understanding of Human Rights Issues and Their Cultural Identity. In: Roux, C., Becker, A. (eds) Human Rights Literacies. Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99567-0_6
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