“Justice Flickering in Their Eyes”: The Impact of Human Rights Education Upon Newcomer Immigrant Youth at an Urban High School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Achieving Social Justice for Immigrant Students Through Empowering Education

Abstract

Newcomer immigrant youth in the United States are especially in need of an educational pedagogy that contributes to a critical consciousness that promotes self-determination and transformation. Human rights education (HRE) in schools provides content and pedagogy to critically examine social conditions that contribute to human rights violations while also offering a legal framework to influence change.

This qualitative study explored the teaching of HRE in four classrooms at an urban public high school serving newcomer immigrant youth in a cosmopolitan city. Research focused on the impact HRE had upon newcomer immigrant students and how it helped them describe their struggles in urban communities and the broader world. Critical pedagogy provided the conceptual framework for this study along with its methodology.

Author

• Juliet A. Schiller, University of San Francisco