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25 SES 04 A: Intergenerational relations, NGO school programs and children's participation
Paper Session
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25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Paper Who is Educating Whom? Complex Intergenerational Learning in Children’s [Digital] Rights Education University College Dublin, Ireland Presenting Author:In 1989, two remarkable frameworks came into being that would come to have a significant impact on children’s lives. The first was the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The second was when the computer scientist Tim Berners Lee invented a system for organising and accessing information on the internet, the World Wide Web. Both frameworks changed children’s lives significantly, one intentionally, the other unintentionally. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was designed for children, without children (Freeman, 2020). The World Wide Web was created for adults by adults, without children in mind, but now “one in three internet users is a child” (Livingstone, Carr & Byrne, 2016). Thirty-five years on, the debate on children’s rights in relation to the digital and education, should be more dynamic and questioning than ever, as artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies bring new considerations, challenges, and opportunities to the discussion. Today’s children are born in an era of technology. They have never experienced a world without the digital, and they bring a newness, a natality, with their participation in the digital that no other generation has brought to education. It is crucial for adults to seriously consider the new opportunities emerging from children’s lived experiences in the digital age (Third et al, 2019). Taking into consideration the unique aspects of the new generation’s digital experiences, teachers need to shift away from viewing knowledge as linear (Graham and Fitzgerald, 2010) and their role as the primary source of information. Education for the digital needs to be an earnest participatory dialogue between the teacher and the children. The significance and complexity of the digital in children’s lives finds acknowledgement in the recent UNCRC General Comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. It recognises the value of the views of children in informing policy and practice. It highlights the urgency of analysing the digital environment from a child’s perspective, through the lens of children’s rights, within a local context, to gather valuable information and understanding. This paper explores how children’s rights education in relation to the digital environment can be conceived, by listening to children’s views through the lens of children’s rights, in a world of ever-changing, adult-centric, digital technology. The main research questions of the paper are: 1) How are intergenerational relationships formed, and informed, in educating for the digital environment? 2) How are the rôles of educators and learners negotiated in children’s rights education? 3) How can education respect and develop the views of the younger child in learning for participation in the digital environment? 4) What supports are needed from adults in children’s rights education? The answers to these questions can provide a systematic approach for children’s rights education to open entry points for digital environment education that address the complexities of the digital divide and digital literacy between the generations. This research listens to the views of younger children. It gives due weight to the opinions and expressions of ten-year-old urban primary school children, at risk of educational disadvantage, in Ireland. Its framework is founded on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), following the Lundy Model of Child Participation (2007). As Lundy states there, can be no “watering down” of listening to children and giving their views due weight. This research dives deep into the experiences of younger children of the digital environment and examines how the UNCRC can provide a lexicon to express their views, appropriate to an educational setting. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used This paper presents the findings of a qualitative Participatory Action Research (PAR) study conducted in an urban primary school in Ireland. Participants included twenty-two ten-year-old boys. It was conducted in-person over a period of ten months in 2023. The findings are part of a broader project exploring the experiences of the digital divide among children considered at risk of educational disadvantage and the rôle of digital and rights education in their empowerment. The study employs Stringer’s Interacting Spiral Model (Stringer, 2007), with its three action cycles: looking, thinking, and acting. The look, think and act cycles mirror the tripartite nature of Article 13, UNCRC, to seek, receive and impart information. The action cycles provided the children with opportunities to learn about their rights, build their communication capacities and, as a result, contribute to the study more confidently: Action Cycle 1: A visit to the Ombudsman for Children’s Office in Ireland to learn about their children’s rights with a particular focus on communication rights. Action 2: A classroom action with six lesson-type interventions structured around specific concepts linked to articles within the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The children reflected upon and designed the content for the interventions, for the purpose of enabling a specially designed character, to learn about communicating online using their knowledge of children’s rights. An adaptation of the Willows & Hyders (1998), study as further developed by Dobbs, Smith & Taylor (2006), with its indirect questioning approach, is used to encourage more open engagement. This helps to uncover what the children feel they should know and be educated about to go online. Action 3: A child-led presentation of the education process they developed with the character, along with their suggestions for children’s rights and the digital, presented to the Ombudsman for Children, on his return visit to their school. Their content and ideas, in their own words, were authentically represented in an animated digital presentation. A Mosaic Approach (Clarke & Moss, 2017) of data collection was used including observations, focus groups, children’s artefacts, and recordings of group activities. Participating adults were guided to facilitate, but not influence, the unfolding conversations, respecting the right of every child to express their views and for those views to be given due weight (Article 12, UNCRC), using the Lundy Model of Child Participation (Lundy, 2007). A thematic inductive analysis approach is employed with the assistance of MAXQDA software. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings This research demonstrates a need for a shift in the intergenerational learning paradigm of education for the digital environment. Preliminary findings suggest the teacher can no longer be the sole source of knowledge, however, they have crucial rôle to play as listener, facilitator, and advisor in children’s education for digital participation. The research proposes the key to making this intergenerational paradigm shift is to employ a rights-based approach following the Lundy Model of Child Participation (2007), using a third-party questioning method. In casting the children as the teachers of a new imaginary alien classmate, they were empowered to share their own opinions and suggestions about digital participation without fear of judgement or ridicule. In seeking to impart information they revealed an in-depth knowledge of the challenges and opportunities of the internet and what they would like to learn, using their own extensive digital vocabulary. The children showed their opinions and ideas were relevant, deserved to be given due weight, and could contribute positively to their education for the digital environment. At the start, they were unaware that children's rights existed, but once they were introduced to the UNCRC, they became activated and interested in expressing their views about their rights and the online environment, effortlessly assimilating the language of the UNCRC in their dialogue. They proposed that Article 42 “Everyone should know about the UNCRC” should be more prominent in education and that children should get to learn about their rights, particularly in relation to the digital world. To quote one of the child researchers “they could have done more with their rights” if they knew them earlier. Every aspect of digital participation for children today touches on and affects children’s rights. References Clark, A., & Moss, Peter. (2017). Listening to Young Children: A guide to understanding and using the Mosaic Approach. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Dobbs T A, Smith A B, Taylor NJ. (2006). ‘No, We Don’t Get a Say, Just Suffer the Consequences’: Children Talk about Family Discipline. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 14, 137–156. Freeman. (2020). A Magna Carta for Children. Cambridge University Press. General Assembly of the United Nations. (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations. General Comment No.25, UNCRC. (2021). [General Comment]. Graham & Fitzgerald. (2010). Progressing children’s participation: Exploring the potential of a dialogical turn. Sage Journals, 17(3), 291–431. Livingstone, Carr & Byrne. (2016). One in Three: Internet Governance and Childrens Rights. UNICEF Office of Research, Florence. Lundy, L. (2007). ‘Voice’ is not enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. British Educational Research Journal, 33(6), 927–942. Stringer, E. (2007). Action Research. SAGE Publications. Third, Collin, Walsh & Black. (2019). Young people in digital society. Willow C, Hayder T. (1998). It hurts you inside, children talking about smacking. National Children’s Bureau/Save the Children. 25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Paper Strengthening Children’s Rights in School Through NGO Programs – How Well Does It Work? 1Örebro University, Sweden; 2Karlstad University, Sweden Presenting Author:The research reported in this paper examined the effect of an NGO school program aiming to strengthen schools’ work with children’s rights.
Children’s human rights is a complex area for schools to handle, and human rights is conceived as a difficult matter to teach. National direction in curricula is often lacking (Bron & Thijs, 2011; Leung et al. 2011). Research has shown that many teachers feel that they lack sufficient knowledge about children’s human rights and that teaching material is scarce (Rinaldi, 2017; Tibbitts & Kirschsläger, 2010). To get guidance, schools and teachers may turn to actors outside the school, such as NGOs, perceived as experts in human and child rights issues.
Previous evaluations of such school programs for children’s rights have shown promising effects, for example, improvements on school climate, relations, behaviour, and children's influence (Covell, 2010; Sebba & Robinson, 2010; Halås Torbjörnsen, 2020), but also raised some concerns, for example, a tendency to focus on responsibilities rather than rights and doubts about how durable the positive effects are (Sebba & Robinson, 2010; Howe & Covell, 2010; Dunhill, 2019). The evidence presented for a correlation between learning about rights and the claimed positive effects is relatively weak, according to Jerome and colleagues (Jerome et al., 2015). The authors argue that most studies have focused more on implementation processes than outcomes. They also highlight methodological weaknesses in some studies: low response rates in surveys and few interviews in interview studies, mainly drawing on teachers’ views and views of students selected by teachers to participate. The knowledge available about how school programs for children’s rights affect schools is accordingly disparate and insecure.
One of the children’s rights programs available for schools is offered by UNICEF. The program was developed by UNICEF UK, and named Rights Respecting Schools Award. The program was brought to Sweden and modified by UNICEF Sweden to align with Swedish national school culture. It was also renamed to Rights-based school. Since its start in 2010, the Swedish version of the program has spread and is now used in about 30 Swedish schools.
Commissioned by UNICEF Sweden, we have undertaken a large-scale evaluation research project to elucidate how well the program works to strengthen schools’ work with children’s rights. The evaluation was designed to identify how Rights-based school affects students' and teachers' knowledge, experiences and views, and whether differences can be found when compared with students and teachers in schools that do not use any program. The following questions guided the evaluation. 1. How does using Rights-based school affect:
2. Are there any differences in these aspects compared with schools that do not use a program? Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used The data was created in five schools that use Rights-based school (program schools), and in five schools that do not use the program (non-program schools). Three program schools and three non-program schools are primary schools, with students in years 1-6. Two program schools and two non-program schools are lower secondary schools with students in years 7-9. Four of the program schools had just started, while one school (a primary school) had used the program for eight years. Interviews with teachers and students in years 2, 5 and 8 were conducted in the program schools during three consecutive years (2021-2023) and in the non-program schools during 22-23. In total, 410 students and 58 teachers in program schools were interviewed, and 120 students and 23 teachers in non-program schools. The interviews were semi-structured. Teachers were individually interviewed while the students were mostly interviewed in pairs. Students were asked questions to indicate knowledge about rights and their experience of influence in school. Teachers in program schools were asked what effect they considered the program to have, and teachers in all schools were asked to describe their view on and work with children’s rights and student influence. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Qualitative content analysis (Bengtsson, 2016; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) was undertaken to understand the meanings expressed by the interviewees. The first analytic step was to inductively create a coding scheme that was thereafter used for all data. The second analytic step was to draw out and describe the meaning of the essential content. We believe that our research design has avoided a range of weaknesses pointed out earlier. First, by including a large number of interviews with teachers and students, and the latter not being selected by principals or teachers. The data's size strengthens the content analysis's rigour and the comparison of students’ and teachers’ perceptions. Second, by interviewing teachers and students in schools that do not use Rights-based school, our design includes a data set for comparison. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Concerning students’ knowledge about children’s rights our hypothesis that students in program schools would demonstrate increasingly better knowledge was counter-proved. Instead, we identified a pattern of “rise and fall” in the new program schools and a yearly knowledge level decline in the established program school. In the new schools, students’ knowledge accordingly increased significantly between years 1 and 2 but dropped year 3, although for most schools to a somewhat higher level than the starting point of year 1. In the established school, the knowledge level was very high in year 1 and then dropped both years 2 and 3. This finding echoes the concern raised in earlier research about the durability of the positive effects of introducing a school program. However, compared to the children’s rights knowledge displayed by students in non-program schools, all program schools showed a better picture. This was particularly evident for students in years 2 and 5, where the difference was significant, to the program schools’ benefit. The findings concerning students’ experiences of student influence showed less differences between program schools and non-program schools. However, indications were found that students in program schools experience a wider array of influence possibilities than students in non-program schools. The latter reported mostly that they could affect matters related to breaks, such as playing material and activities, and to a lesser extent, they described influence over things in the classroom. Students in program schools gave a wider description of matters in the classroom that they are able to affect, for example, the content of education, working methods, and evaluation methods. The teacher data analysis is underway as this abstract is submitted and will be finalised during the first half of 2024. References Bengtsson, M. (2016). How to plan and perform a qualitative study using content analysis. NursingPlus open, 2, 8-14.Bron, J. & Thijs, A. (2011). Leaving it to the schools: citizenship, diversity and human rights education in the Netherlands. Educational Research, 53(2), 123-136. Dunhill, A. (2019). The language of the human rights of children: a critical discourse analysis. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hull). Halås, C. T. (2020). UNICEFs rettighetsskoler: En undersøkelse av to pilotskolers erfaringer med å bli UNICEF rettighetsskoler. [UNICEF’s rights schools: an examination of two pilot schools’ experiences of becoming a UNICEF rights school]. Bodö: Nord universitet, FoU-rapport nr 58. (R&D-report). Howe, R. B., & Covell, K. (2010). Miseducating children about their rights. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 5(2), 91-102. Hsieh, H. F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative health research, 15(9), 1277-1288.Jerome, Lee; Emerson, Lesley, Lundy, Laura & Orr, Karen. (2015) “Teaching and learning about child rights: A study of implementation in 26 countries. Queens University Belfast/Unicef. Leung, Y. W., Yuen, T. W. W., & Chong, Y. K. (2011). School‐based human rights education: Case studies in Hong Kong secondary schools. Intercultural education, 22(2), 145-162. Rinaldi, S. (2017). Challenges for human rights education in Swiss secondary schools from a teacher perspective. Prospects, 47(1-2), 87-100. Sebba, J., & Robinson, C. (2010). Evaluation of UNICEF UK’s rights respecting schools award (RRSA). London: UNICEF UK. https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/12/RRSA_Evaluation_Report.pdfCovell, K. (2010) School engagement and rights-respecting schools. Cambridge Journal of Education 40(1), 39-51. Tibbitts, F., & Kirchschläger, P. G. (2010). Perspectives of research on human rights education. Journal of human rights education, 2(1), 8-29. | ||