in discussion Program Design / Selection of personnel and pedagogical approaches » *Note*
This section is concerned with planning the interaction between the educators and the learners (trainers – teachers/ teachers-students).
The success of any educational program depends on the quality of the teaching and administrative personnel and their respective abilities to energize the group. It is not an easy task to find personalities with e.g. solid educational experience and human rights advocacy skills, nor is it easy to design education programs that results in e.g. improving civil societies, creating and maintaining a “human rights culture” etc. The following questions are hoped to help in this process:
a. What human and physical resources and techniques are available locally? (This is both a question of cost-effectiveness, as well empowering local teachers and trainers to encourage a sustainable program.) How will these local trainers (and foreigners) be perceived by the learners? Are there social and cultural barriers?
b. What are the program’s conscious goals for the relationship between teachers and learners? At the sessions? After the sessions?
c. How are these goals to be reinforced in the various components of the program? It’s financing? It’s eating and sleeping arrangements? etc.
d. Given the many ways in which a group of people learn, which methods are going to be used?
e. What resources are going to be made available to the participants for use after the program?
The relationship between the educators and learners is especially critical in human rights education. The reason is that human rights ideas are closely linked with concepts of fairness, justice, equality, respect for human dignity, non-discrimination, and participation in the decisions that affects one’s life. Day to day classroom relationships convey attitudes that not only influence the learning but also the learners’ attitudes to the idea of human rights.