Human Rights and Values Education in Europe: Research in educational law, curricula and textbooks

ISBN 10: 3931240037 ISBN 13: 9783931240035

Verlag: Fillibach, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

Research in educational law, curricula and textbooks 1997 234 S. Paperback / kartonierte Ausgabe Freiburg, Fillibach Verlag,

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Human Rights and Values Education, An introduction The origin of this book All education is fundamentally based on values and standards determined by the respective social-economic conditions of society. As both historical and contemporary examples show, values education may be misused, if its aims are not made explicit and discussed openly. Thus it is of particular importance to make teachers and student teachers aware of their assumptions, attitudes and values. One of the main goals of teacher trainers should therefore be to equip these professionals with knowledge and abilities of how to reflect upon and deal with values issues. Human rights and values education can be found in all aspects of education, but probably most of all in the concrete and practical educational process, that is, the pedagogical and didactic relation between teacher and child. However, we know that there are many other aspects in the educational process which influence its direction and outcomes considerably. Some believe that the 'hidden curriculum' contributes most significantly. Others believe in more explicit education as the most important stimulus for (social and moral) behaviour. As many authors confirm, however, textbooks for subject-matter are amongst the most important agents of the explicit and hidden curriculum. Slowly the focus of interest became clearer. The question that motivated us to pursue this research was: what will textbooks in primary education reveal of the relative importance which different EU countries place on human rights, values education and the European dimension in primary education? Since we have all been engaged in teacher training and are all very interested in human rights, values and the development of a European dimension, these concerns brought us together in the first place. We decided to concentrate our research on textbooks and to extend it to educational legislation, curricula and attainment targets, assuming that the content of textbooks would be closely linked or might reflect general goals for education. Methodological limitations Before we started the investigations, we had many discussions about the methodology of our co-operation and research. After some time we had to conclude that despite all our endeavours we could not succeed in finding a single, unified methodology. The main reasons for this were: 1

The great differences in national political histories and their effects on educational legislation. As the reader will learn from individual papers, political and economic situations have a great impact on the content and development of educational law and educational goals. 2

Some countries have a highly centralised educational system, while others have an extremely decentralised system, which sometimes, in federal states, for example, is even further differentiated. 3

Some countries have a rather rigid national curriculum, others have great freedom -- not only choosing their textbooks and methods, but also 'choosing'-- within limits -- their own individual school goals. 4

In some countries textbooks are published and prescribed by the government, while in other countries there is a highly competitive market for school textbooks, from which schools can make choices based on their particular situations. 5

There is also a great difference in the organisation of the teaching profession in different countries, which, in turn, can affect the status of teachers and of teacher training. 6

On the level of teacher training itself, we found that, for each of us, there was great variance in the availability of research time, and in the importance placed upon research by our different institutions. 7

We discovered that we had different backgrounds and experiences of teacher training and research. But, although we also genuinely feel that this variety has advantages and can avoid academic narrow-mindedness, it was also one of the aspects that hampered finding a generally agreed methodology. 8

Last, but not least, the time to discuss methodological problems was limited. Ultimately we had to accept the constraints under which we would work and the fact of our methodological differences. We were eager to get on with the work we had in mind and decided not to prolong the initial phase of our discussion too much. We might have spent the whole time discussing methodology and still not reach agreement. There may be a valuable European lesson to be learned here. The result of all this is that we did not succeed in finding common criteria for the comparison of the outcomes of the analysis. Although all papers will focus on (aspects of) human rights, values education and European dimension, they will range from focusing on educational legislation, attainment targets, curricula or textbook analysis. But also within each area of research there will be differences due to the points raised above. Sometimes only a fragment of all the textbooks that are in use could be examined, sometimes all textbooks are examined. Sometimes the approach towards textbooks is more qualitative, sometimes more quantitative. Some of us concentrated more on human rights and not on implicit or explicit values education, some on the European dimension. Some of us did not reach the final stage of investigating the textbooks, but revealed interesting information about the intention to be found in national legislation, or attainment targets. We are aware of the fact that this clearly reduces the possibilities for comparison. Nevertheless all the papers fit in very well in a general framework, which is described below.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Fillibach
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 3931240037
• ISBN 13: 9783931240035
• Einband: Broschiert
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Herausgeber: Evans Dave, Grässler Harald, Pouwels Jan G
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar