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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.
| Be sure to take a look at our new collection of articles, guides, and classroom modules for your curriculum: New Tactics Resources for Educators! |
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!
Curriculum flexibility
Susan Atwood, Instructor, University of Minnesota’s Leadership : Leadership for Global Citizenship.
The question of curriculum flexibility is, I think, a crucial one. If we rely on over-structured curriculum we fall into the trap of not being current and relevant to our students. Personally I outline a framework with themes, and broadly worded assignments at the beginning of the semester and then do a detailed lesson plan week by week. This allows me to use contemporary materials from publications and internet sources. I always tell the students that whereas the basis course is the same each semester, the detailled content is very diffierent. For instance the past couple of semestesr we have looked at leadership by studying some of the political party candidates and their views and approaches to issues. The State of the Union address is analyzed by students not for policy, but for leaderhip style. Of course now we have the global financial crisis which is an unfortunate but excellent case study of the perils of our interconnectedness.
Also, I start each class with five minutes of student input from issues that have caught their attention since the last class. Often these are taken from the U of M student daily newspaper. Sometimes these issues expand to take up much of the class or form the basis for a subsequent class. When New Tactics came in this semester to do the tactical mapping exercise, we started them off by using an issue with which we felt they would have some level of comfort - a landlord evicting a tenant for cultural reasons (cooking, music etc). Once they had tried their hand at this issue, we moved them on to consider their own country projects on child labor and trafficking. Both from the perspective of comfort level and interest, I find it essential to respond to the students in any particular class and try to make the subject have resonance for them in their own lives. Some professors at the Kennedy School of Government (who shall remain unamed!) still teach the Cuban missile crisis case study for conflict resolution and diplomacy classes. Well, I am sure it is compelling but there have been quite some crises since that current undergraduates might feel a little more connected to. It is always great when a student comes into class with additional information on a topic we have discussed and realize that the issues we discuss in class are ones that are currently important in the 'real world".