"Some Kind of Crazy Eleanor Roosevelt Utopia": Human Rights Educators' Coalescing Conceptions With Citizenship Education

• In Event: Promoting Equitable Social Studies Education

Abstract

This paper is a qualitative comparative case study of human rights educators’ conceptualization of the relationship between human rights education and democratic citizenship education. I examine the research questions: 1) What do social studies teachers tasked with teaching human rights and department chairs who oversee these teachers identify as the purpose of human rights education? 2) How do these teachers and department chairs conceptualize the relationship between democratic citizenship education and human rights education? and 3) In what ways are these teachers’ and department chairs’ conceptualizations of citizenship reflected in both human rights education curriculum and instruction? Findings suggest human rights educators are thinking about and enacting citizenship education in complex, sometimes overlapping and competing ways with human rights education

Author

• Ian McGregor, University of Nevada - Reno