Learning About Social Justice Through Adolescents' Right to Participation in School in Mexico

• In Event: Adopting a Human Rights Framework to Support Social Justice Through the Teaching of Social Studies

Abstract

This paper discusses key challenges to Human Rights Education (HRE) in Mexico, where it is almost exclusively based on teaching about Human Rights (HR). Focusing on children’s right to participation as a possible alternative strategy for HRE, the paper explores:
1) Legal, curricular, and practical limitations of the social studies or Civic and Ethical Formation (CEF) course in Mexico’s middle education (educación secundaria).
2) Necessary changes for developing an education for adolescents through and for HR (UN, 2011).
3) Implications of a wider approach to HRE for an education through and for social justice.
The paper argues that learning the value of working for social justice requires that children experience the power of practicing their own rights in school and to realise how power asymmetries can be reduced.
The analysis combines Lundy’s (2007) conceptualisation of Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child with Pérez-Exposito’s (2015) framework for the analysis and evaluation of student participation in school. The concepts of audience and influence, and the notion of quality in pupils’ participation, are used to argue that the right to participation implies more than ‘giving voice’ to students. Spaces for pupils’ voice are important, but the possibility of educating in the value of participation for social justice relies strongly on the opportunities that students find in the school for more inclusive, autonomous, authentic and efficacious forms of involvement.
The paper interprets data from a mixed methods research in Mexico City’s middle schools, located within two contrasting municipalities (delegaciones) in terms of level of human development and degree of urbanization. The research followed a sequential mixed-methods strategy (Greene, Caracelli, & Graham, 1989; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009), with three stages. The first involved a documentary analysis of the schools’ legal framework and the CEF’s curriculum. The second was a qualitative stage in two schools (one per municipality), comprising three workshops with students per school and semi-structured interviews with teachers of CEF and the two principals. The third stage was a quantitative phase in which a self-administrated questionnaire was applied to a representative sample of third-grade students from all the general secondary schools in these two areas.
The results show that the main challenges relate to 1) widening the scope of adolescents’ participation in school, particularly by fostering the development of agencies through which pupils’ voice can be powerfully channelled, and 2) developing a framework for the relationship between adults and adolescents in school, based on children’s rights and the promotion of authenticity, autonomy and efficacy in students’ forms of participation. In order to face both challenges, the paper identifies the need of an adequate legal framework and key curricular changes.
The study contributes to the debate about the transformative role of HRE, in front of relevant critiques about the use of HR to maintain asymmetrical power relations and/or illegitimate forms of domination. It is also significant to a growing literature on the positive and transformative consequences of quality student participation in school (Mitra & Serriere, 2012).

Author

• Leonel Perez Exposito, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana