Browsing by Author "Auer, Irene"

According to the principles of the international human rights documents and the curriculum of basic education, human rights education should be taken into account in all teaching. Previous studies, however, show that human rights education is not sufficiently successful in basic education and that teachers' level of knowledge of human rights, the content of human rights treaties and their mandatory nature is generally weak. The purpose of this thesis is to describe, analyze and interpret the human rights knowledge of primary school teachers, their views of human rights education and their capacity to implement human rights education in their teaching. Research questions are: 1. How well do elementary school teachers know the content of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents defining human rights? 2. What attitudes do primary school teachers hold regarding human rights education and its mandatory nature? The research material was collected through an electronic questionnaire addressed to the teachers of Finnish elementary schools in Helsinki. There were 56 replies. The material was mainly analyzed by quantitative methods. Teachers in the elementary school were poorly acquainted with the content of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights documents, and specially with the binding nature of human rights education. Human rights education was considered more important by teachers who recognized the binding nature of the curriculum regarding human rights education or regarded human rights education to be among their teachable subjects. The results suggest that teachers' attitudes towards human rights education are tainted by the teacher's experience of his own human rights knowledge and his school’s involvement in the subject. The conclusion of the thesis is that there is a clear need for the development of human rights education. Particular emphasis should be put on improving the knowledge of the human rights of teachers so that the ethos of human rights education in the curriculum would also be part of everyday education.