The November New Tactics on-line dialogue features “Human Rights in Higher Education: Incorporating practical experience”. This dialogue specifically features ideas, experiences and methods from human rights higher education programs for incorporating practical experience into human rights curriculums to better prepare human rights advocates for doing “on the ground” and “in the trenches” human rights work.
The featured resource practitioners (biographical information) include:
- Abigail Booth, Programme Manager, Head of Nairobi Office, Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Kenya
- Alice Nderitu, Fahamu (Kenya) in coordination with the University of Pretoria, South Africa
- Jadwiga Maczynska, Project Manager, Jagiellonian University Human Rights Centre, Krakow, Poland
- Mingzhen Ge, Shandong University, Human Rights Center, Law School, China
- Diane Sisely, Director, Australian Centre for Human Rights Education at RMIT University
- Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota, USA
- Robin Kirk, Director, Duke University Human Rights Center, North Carolina, USA
- Nicole Palasz, Center for International Education, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Amy Weismann, Deputy Director, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
- Susan Atwood, Instructor, University of Minnesota’s Leadership : Leadership for Global Citizenship.
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Main themes of this dialogue:
- Stories of Practice: examples of how practical experience is being incorporated in human rights education programs
- Challenges: ethical issues with incorporating practical experience in human rights education programs
- Curriculum Resources: creating and simulating practical experience
Please help us to keep this dialogue organized by 'replying' to these main themes, or 'replying' to other comments, instead of creating NEW comments. Thanks!
What resources would you want to become or made more available?
In my work, we usually try to plan on a detailed curriculum for the whole year programme, covering some of of the three quarters of the time available, so that we can include extra subjects as suggested by the participants themselves (e.g. presentations on problems they work on or have particular interest for) or current things that come up during the semester and we feel need covering. I was wondering if you do the same and what is the level of flexibility you can use in your curriculum? I know that in some academic settings it is prefered when the students are provided with a detailed curriculum, while making course selection. How do you manage to tailor your course to new issues that come up during the academic year (e.g. current human rights issues?)
In reference to the above and to the question in the subject line: do you use some pre-made curricula available in various fields as inspiration and source of ideas? We have been to some extent incorporating some ideas as provided by the Refugee Law Reader created by the Hungarian Helsinki Commitee and funded under European Refugee Fund available at http://www.refugeelawreader.org/ , providing cases, documents and materials for refugee law practitioners, including a suggestion in a basic curriculum to go through major points. That has been very helpful, in particulat due to the fact that each edition is updated, so that you make sure you do not miss out anything important.
Jadwiga Maczynska, Project Manager, Jagiellonian University Human Rights Centre, Krakow, Poland