Human Rights Education, Migration and Religious

Observance

Professor Alison Phipps

University of Glasgow

From: Red Bird by Mary Oliver

Of the Empire

New Scots and Human Rights Education

Scotland

Scotland provides a distinctive research and policy context within the U.K. for migration, refugee and asylum issues.

Devolution

Whilst immigration and the status of non-UK citizens are reserved matters, care and responsibility are devolved matters

The City of Glasgow

• Has a long history of hosting communities of migrants.

• As a river city and through its ship building it has a history of migration from Scotland over the centuries.

• It now hosts one of the largest populations of refugees and asylum seekers under the refugee and asylum dispersal policy

GRAMNET

Launched in December 2009 The University of Glasgow’s Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network brings together researchers and practitioners, NGOs and policy makers undertaking research and knowledge exchange with migrant, refugee and asylum communities in Scotland and internationally.

Expertise

Through its academic research and knowledge exchange partnerships GRAMNet has a wide range of research expertise in relation to Scotland’s refugee, asylum and migrant communities.

Human Rights Education & Migration:

The Example of Religious Observance

Impetus for Change: 2001 HMI report

It doesn’t work

Review Group 2005

Sensing

• mystery • values• meaningfulness• changed qualities of

awareness• otherness• challenge • …in both the experience

and through the reflection on that experience.

Twofold focus

• 1) Developing the communal aspect of school ethos

• 2) developing each pupil’s spiritual life via an emphasis upon ‘personal search’

• …for those who do and do not belong to any religious tradition

Key Issues

• Definition and aims of R.O

• Meaning of ‘spiritual development’

• Whether there are shared values in secondary education

• The relationship btw R.O and M.E

• Exemplar material and training

• Enabling of participation in R.O ‘with integrity’

Summary of Recommendations

• Opportunities for reflection, deepening of worth of individual

• Participation with integrity• Distinction btw assemblies for R.O and

celebration of success• Each school determines own policy (in

accordance with guidelines)• 6x year• Promotion of Ethos• Informal Curriculum & diversity of beliefs

Religious Observance: Research Findings

Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow

Fieldwork

Interview Data: Practitioners

Interview Data: Pupils

Interview Data: Parents

Summary of Findings

• teachers; parents; children; leaders, inspectors lack confidence and literacy in matters spiritual

• R.O is a Lone Ranger activity• practitioners want collective support• ‘self- evaluation tool kit’ • there is a pervading expression of ‘spiritual

bankruptcy’ in a nation• the language and forms of expression are

inimical to the purpose of R.O

Religious Observance:A Practical Response

Developing a Peer-Led Training Programme for HRE through R.O

What do we do when….?

• teachers; parents; children; leaders, inspectors lack confidence and literacy in matters spiritual

• R.O is a Lone Ranger activity• When practitioners call for collective support• Where there is ‘no self- evaluation tool kit’• When there is a pervading expression of

‘spiritual bankruptcy’ in a nation?• When the language and forms of expression are

inimical to the purpose of R.O?

Bring on the experts…..?

• Not if this is to ‘tell others how to do it’

• Not if this is based on a ‘deficit model’

• Not if the ‘experts’ know the same as those in the context

• Not if experts are at best tolerated and at worst reviled and distrusted

• Not if this is to make us economically viable

Bring on the Peers……

• Those holding the space of mystery; disillusionment; hope and fear; those hold such cosmic; vulnerable; Godly, loving humanness that touches us as we live life and live grief and live as hoping creatures.

People who are…

……workers on the edges of the heart; the soul; the deep space of emotion and fear. (Teachers; Chaplains; Parents)

What is a ‘Self- Evaluation Tool Kit’?

• Not a tool kit.

• Time and Space in a different mode to the mode of practice when difficulties and wonders can be considered, safely, with others, for the purpose of increasing our sense of mystery; values; otherness; meaningfulness; changed awareness; challenge.

Action Research

• Describe the difficulty; the hope; the wonder of an experience/ activity

• Listen to others descriptions• Work together on reflecting common

connections and interesting differences• Think and hold the sharing of stories in such a

way as to sense mystery; values; meaningfulness; changed awareness; challenge.

• Consider new possibilities for future action

Remembering that ……

• You cannot solve a problem using the same methods as were used to create the problem in the first place.

Bring on others…..

• Policy makers; leaders; academics, parents, NGOs, churches, chaplains, the world…..

• To enable reflection in a different space and time and with new insights (often from sources as yet unfamiliar to practitioners)

Even Universities…..

• The willingness to continually revise one’s own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself to other minds (teacher; books..) in order to increase the possibility that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of the sky. (Elaine Scarry)