Human Rights and Citizenship Education: An Intercultural Perspective

Nektaria Palaiologou · Michalinos Zembylas

Nov 2018 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

About this ebook

This volume examines different conceptualizations of ‘human rights’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘interculturalism’, as well as their inter-relationships in different national contexts. This intersection, in its various combinations, is explored theoretically, pedagogically and practically, with the studies investigating whether certain human rights demands reveal patterns that are incompatible with citizenship and multiculturalist claims. Contributions also explore the theoretical and practical bases on which human rights, citizenship and intercultural education should be grounded, as well as how human rights, citizenship and intercultural education can join forces to make policy, practice and research stronger and more robust.

The issues explored in this volume continue to feature on policy agendas at local, national and international levels at a time when considerable changes are taking place within and across societies. Particularly in Europe, the current refugee and migration crisis complicates this situation further, creating new, complex challenges for countries and regions, including how to respond productively and justly to the migration of peoples; how to complement existing legal frameworks and modes of governance to face threats to social justice, security and social cohesion of political and civil societies; and how to develop new rights that increase participation in social and political life, especially in groups that are vulnerable and marginalized.

As shown here, however, these challenges provide unique opportunities to re-imagine the transformative potential of the intersection among intercultural, human rights and citizenship education in different situations and contexts.

About the author

Nektaria Palaiologou is Associate Professor of Intercultural Education at the School of Education of University of Western Macedonia, Greece. Currently, Vice President of the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE) and Director of the Hellenic Association for Intercultural Education (HAIE) in Greece. She has authored three books on intercultural education, has translated two books, and is the editor of Mapping the Field of Multicultural/Intercultural Education Worldwide: Towards the Development of the New Citizen (with Gunther Dietz, 2012) and Intercultural Education: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges (2014). In 2017, she co-edited (with Paul Gorski) a special issue for the Intercultural Education Journal entitled “The Evolution of Intercultural and Multicultural Education: Scholarship and Practice for New Socio-political and Economic Realities”. Her research interests focus on educational issues for immigrant and refugee children, teachers’ training in the field of intercultural education, and citizenship and human rights issues.

Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. He is also Honorary Professor in the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, human rights education and citizenship education. His recent books include: Psychologized Language in Education: Denaturalizing a Regime of Truth (with Z. Bekerman), and Socially Just Pedagogies in Higher Education (co-edited with V. Bozalek, R. Braidotti, and T. Shefer). In 2016, he received the Distinguished Researcher Award in “Social Sciences and Humanities” from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.