Human Rights Education in Iceland: Learning about transformative pedagogies from upper secondary school teachers' stories

Daily, we witness human rights violations linked to poverty, forced migration, discrimination and right-wing xenophobia, perpetuating positions of subordination and marginalisation. Human rights violations are also evident in schools. Human rights education (HRE) is a right, as articulated in human rights instruments, internationally and nationally. Yet in Iceland, HRE is not a recognised field of social justice education and research; human rights are addressed or assumed in multicultural, inclusive, sustainability, democracy and citizenship education. Democracy and human rights are one of six curriculum pillars in the 2011 national curriculum guides, suggesting a commitment to human rights. An interpretive narrative inquiry approach draws on ten upper secondary school teachers’ life stories, analysed using grounded theory and reflexive thematic analysis, to inform and extend understandings of transformative HRE. Professional knowledge from the researcher´s own narrative and analysis of human rights, HRE literature, education policy and the school context in Iceland, are used as additional data sets to inform analysis of the empirical data. Findings on teachers’ reasons for working with human rights, their practices, and perceptions of systemic challenges are used to inform teacher education. Findings suggest that teachers’ moral and political convictions, informed by cross-cultural experiences, are diluted by tacit knowledge of what human rights and HRE are. Teachers’ practices are reflective of learning through human rights rather than about and for human rights. Human rights risk being trivialised as teachers revert to familiar discourses and practices. Teachers report insufficient professional support, creating tensions and contradictions between their own human rights commitments and systemic expectations. The study argues that it is currently problematic to discuss HRE as transformative pedagogy in the context of conservative upper secondary schools. First, attention should be placed on human rights in teacher education. The study conceptualises an HRE teacher education framework aimed at developing teachers’ human rights and HRE knowledge and skills to generate human rights praxis as a counter-narrative to systemic constraints. The study contributes to international and local HRE scholarship by highlighting the responsibility and role of teacher education in sustaining human rights cultures.