Creating global citizens: The emergence and development of human rights education

This dissertation investigates the emergence and development of human rights education (HRE) in schools. The analysis extends research from the world polity literature in sociology and neoinstitutional theory in organizational sociology. Building from numerous empirical studies that document the development of a rationalized and elaborated world polity dedicated to notions of progress and justice, my dissertation suggests that human rights issues have become an increasingly important component of modern educational systems throughout the world. I pursue this argument by documenting the history of human rights education at the international level and by considering three central questions that focus on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): Why has human rights education spread throughout the LAC region? How has the educational reform diffused---what are the mechanisms involved in the spread of human rights education? How do we account for variation in national receptivity to human rights education?; The dissertation incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative portion of the dissertation investigates the factors that lead nations in Latin America to adopt human rights education. Key variables include: (1) the number of nongovernmental organizations working on human rights education; (2) the number of publications on human rights education; and (3) the number of nations incorporating human rights into national curricula. Qualitative analyses document human rights education discourse and network interactions through: (1) an investigation of discussions among human rights education professionals and (2) a comparative case study of human rights education in Costa Rica and Argentina.; Findings suggest that human rights education increasingly is a global education model, a model of development and modernity endorsed by professionals throughout the world. Although domestic factors are important for understanding how human rights education manifests itself in particular countries, human rights education is not just a product of contestation within countries or a simple functional response to problematic situations and human rights violations. Human rights education is a global movement that is becoming institutionalized in organizations, professions, and nations. Countries are influenced by domestic advocacy, but transnational advocacy and professional discourse play a central role in explaining why countries adopt human rights education.