From the curriculum to the classroom: The urgent need for preservice human rights teacher education in the United States

Abstract

Despite recent progress made by the human rights education movement in the United States to bring human rights education into curriculum standards, textbooks, and classrooms, preservice and in-service teachers have few opportunities to receive human rights education themselves. I argue that future teachers urgently need to receive preservice human right teacher education for a number of reasons. First, social studies curriculum standards in forty-two US states include human rights standards (Advocates for Human Rights 2016). Second, human rights education allows learners to engage with the human rights framework and gain skills to advocate to end human rights violations. Third, for human rights education to be effective in ending human rights violations, teachers must teach in a way that can help to dismantle oppression rather than perpetuate it. Thus, teacher educators must implement preservice human rights teacher education thoughtfully. I address challenges to, critiques of, and recommendations for implementation. Following this, I build on these ideas with my own recommendations for implementation. These recommendations are based on interviews I conducted with members of Human Rights Educators USA, a national volunteer network of educators and advocates who promote human rights education in the United States (HRE USA 2018).

Note

Acknowledgments

This article benefited from detailed feedback from Sarita Cargas, Kristina Eberbach, Glenn Mitoma, and William Paul Simmons.

Notes

1 All interviewees’ names are confidential.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Columbia University Teachers College; Comparative and International Education Society.

Notes on contributors

Sandra L. Sirota

Sandra Sirota is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Connecticut's Human Rights Institute where she conducts research and teaches courses on human rights, social justice, and education. She earned her doctoral degree from Columbia University. Her current research focuses on teacher education in human rights and the role of human rights education in deterring hate crimes and other forms of discrimination.