Students’ Perceptions of Their Rights in School: A Systematic Review of the International Literature

This review focuses on students’ perceptions of their rights in elementary and secondary schools. The conceptual framework of rights consciousness was applied to understand how students’ knowledge, experiences, and emotions shape their rights perceptions. The analysis is based on 38 empirical studies conducted in different countries. The findings characterize students’ rights perceptions as intuitive—that is, perceptions that are not grounded in legal rules but in students’ personal insights. The findings also identify key factors affecting students’ perceptions: school context, national context, and students’ individual characteristics. The conclusions underscore that school rights-based practices, student body and school staff diversity, and school relationships influence students’ rights consciousness. However, questions remain concerning how students’ perceptions are affected by cultural repertoires, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, and age. The implications are that future studies should apply a context-based agenda to inform the design and implementation of human rights education programs and rights-based organizational practices.

Senior Teachers’ Learning About Student Rights

The study explores the rights consciousness of senior teachers who participated in a student rights professional development (PD) course and designed educational projects during the course. It analyzes teachers’ perceptions of students’ rights and the influence of the PD and other factors on these perceptions. The data included interviews with 17 teachers and an analysis of their projects. One cluster of teachers held a top-down perception of students’ rights, conveying a contrastive approach to rights reflecting students’ autonomy. The second cluster of teachers held a broader perception, which included bottom-up mobilization of students’ free speech and participation rights, conveying a supportive approach to these rights. The teachers’ projects did not reflect these patterns, limiting their focus to rights already embedded in school. Furthermore, the teachers did not report their learning experience as transformative. Rather, they applied their newly acquired knowledge and thinking frameworks to support their existing moral perceptions and practices.