Physical restraint is a restrictive practice used in schools, but there are no up-to-date statistics concerning the frequency of its usage in England and there are concerns as to whether it is being used appropriately and effectively. Pupils with special educational needs are more likely to experience physical restraint in school, but…

This article reports on research in three secondary schools in England where students were engaged in deliberative discussion of controversial issues. The teaching resources used illustrated rights-based dilemmas and the data analysis focused on the nature of the talk and the types of knowledge the students drew upon to inform their discussions.…

This paper considers the potential for the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) of England and Wales to incentivise the exclusion of people with dementia from research. The MCA is intended to standardise and safeguard the inclusion of people with cognitive impairments in research. This entails various procedural requirements, which in pressurised research…

The research underpinning this article has taken place in the context of a research project that seeks to improve children's legal capability. Discussions concerning the place of children's rights in this project led the author to engage with the HRE literature, where they discovered an affinity between the aims of the project and so-called…

Background: People with learning disabilities have the right to choose where they live. However, evidence suggests people's choices are limited due to a shortage of housing. Methods: 200 Lives was a mixed methods research project, which evaluated supported living and residential care for people with learning disabilities in England; 107 people…

This report has been produced by Douglas Bourn, Director of Development Education Research Centre at UCL and Jenny Hatley from Bath Spa University, on behalf of the Our Shared World Coalition of organisations. The focus of Our Shared World is to lobby UK government and other policymakers on why Target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals…

This article critically reviews the European religious education landscape and argues that a religious notion of religion prevails in most models, not only in confessional RE but also in integrative models and even in so-called alternative subjects that are compulsory for pupils who do not take part in confessional RE. Thus, schools in Europe…

This article examines how some schools with ethnically diverse student populations are teaching "about," "for," and "through" human rights. The author conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from a multi-site study, which included secondary schools serving students from immigrant backgrounds in four…

The United Nations (UN) asserts that children and young people should have access to human rights education (HRE) and that schools are one of the key means through which HRE should be made available. However, there is currently limited knowledge about the presence and form of HRE in school contexts, and there is no established means through which…

In 2015, the High Court ruled that the British Government had made 'a false and misleading statement of law' when it claimed a Religious Studies (RS) GCSE syllabus that excluded the systematic teaching of non-religious worldviews like humanism would meet the statutory requirements for teaching Religious Education (RE) at Key Stage 4. This was…

This article considers children's agency within the framework of children's rights education. It starts by considering the ways in which agency is conceptualised within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the implications for education. The main part of the article offers 10 propositions that offer teachers a variety of tools…

This collective paper on radicalization and violent extremism part of the 'Philosophy of education in a new key' initiative by "Educational Philosophy and Theory" brings together some of the leading contemporary scholars writing on the most pressing epistemological, ethical, political and educational issues facing post-9/11 scholarship…

Learning the language of the host country plays a significant role in the social life of migrants regardless of their age, gender or cultural background since it is the key to their integration into different dimensions of the social life from the labour market to education or simple daily interactions. This multi-dimensional integration may give…

This article brings together two distinct but interrelated fields: human rights education (HRE) and safeguarding. It endeavours to show that the former can be beneficial for the efficacy of the latter. By extending an argument put forward recently that for HRE to be effective it must enable children to recognise and respond to lived human rights…

In this article we consider the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014, within the context of the wider reforms made by the Act. Drawing primarily on key informant interviews conducted as part of an ESRC project on Autonomy, Rights and…