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Children's Rights and Participation in Education

This cluster operates as a focus for research which is intended to better understand and improve school children’s lives. It places an emphasis on three distinct but interconnected strands of research activity:

  • Children’s Rights - using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international standards to evaluate the laws, policies and practices which affect children in education;
  • Children’s Participation - examining the mechanisms for and benefits of involving school-children in the decisions which affect them;
  • Research with Children - evaluating the best methods of conducting research into school-children’s lives with a particular focus on approaches which involve children actively in the research process.

For external links related to Children's Rights and Participation in Education please click here.

Cluster Director - Prof Laura Lundy

Cluster Members -  Helen Brown, Dr Bronagh Byrne, Prof Paul Connolly, Hazel Edwards, Prof Jannette Elwood, Prof Tony Gallagher, Anita Gracie, Deena Haydon, Prof Joanne Hughes , Oduntan Jawoniyi, Dr Karen Kerr, Dr Ruth Leitch, Dr Caroline Linse, Mrs Lesley McEvoy, Dr Claire McGlynn, Dr Eugene McKendry, Dr Colette Murphy, Lucy Royal-Dawson, Dr Caryl Sibbett. 

Cluster News and Events

The Cluster is delighted to announce a new member. Dr Bronagh Byrne has been appointed to a Research Fellowship in Children’s Rights under the Improving Children’s Lives initiative and will be working with Dr Laura Lundy on research projects with an explicit children’s rights focus as well as developing  capacity in this area across the university.

The School of Education has seven students conducting Doctoral research with a specific children’s or human rights focus.  This September we welcome Josephine Bweyale from Uganda who will be conducting research  on the topic of human rights education  and  Lucy Royal-Dawson from Amsterdam whose interest is in  human rights in higher education in societies in conflict.    The Cluster is organising monthly reading groups for doctoral students to discuss seminal human rights papers. Click here to view the reading group schedule for September-December 2009.

Professor Audrey Osler, a leading international expert in Human Rights Education will be giving a seminar on the theme of children’s views on their schooling on October 23rd at 1.00 in the School of Education.

Dr Laura Lundy’s 2007 article, “Voice is not enough: conceptualising  Article 12 of the UNCRC”  has been identified as one of the ten  most frequently downloaded articles  from the British Educational Research Journal.   Dr Lundy gave an invited presentation on the UNCRC at a UNESCO summer school on Education Rights held at the University of Antwerp in August.

Cluster members are continuing to develop innovative rights-based methods for conducting research with children.  Dr Laura Lundy and Lesley McEvoy have published an article on the topic in the inaugural issue of Effective Education, edited by Professor Paul Connolly.  Dr Colette Murphy along with Dr Karen Kerr, Lesley McEvoy and Dr Laura Lundy recently completed a major research project for the Wellcome Trust, investigating children’s views on science assessment, which applied a rights-based approach in the context of   a large on-line survey.

Children’s Rights News

Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

On 20 November 2009, the international community will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by the United Nations General Assembly.  To mark this anniversary, the Committee of the Rights of the Child and the Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) and other partners will organise a two-day celebration. 

The celebration will focus on the theme “Dignity, Development and Dialogue,” and will bring together States parties, United Nations bodies and other intergovernmental organisations, national human rights institutions,  international and national non-governmental organisations, children’s and youth groups, academics  and all others interested in the CRC.   The celebration will take place in Geneva on Thursday, 8 and Friday, 9 October 2009.

 

General Comment 12: The Right of the Child to be Heard

The Committee on the Rights of the Child's General Comment 12 on the ‘Right of the Child to be Heard’ was formally adopted during the 51st session in June 2009. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has identified Article 12 as one of the four general principles of the Convention, the others being the right to non-discrimination (Article 2 ), the primary consideration of the child’s best interests ( Article 3 ), and the right to life and development ( Article 6 ). Click here to read the General Comment .