The experience of teachers and students from the best practices of human rights in education

Abstract

The study investigated the schools’ experiences on SUHAKAM’s best practices in Human Rights (ATHAM) programme. The aim of the paper was to highlight the best practices of human rights program as experienced by the teachers and students. The views were expressed in terms of the importance of ATHAM objectives, challenges and ways to overcome the challenges. With the cooperation of the Ministry of Education, five schools were selected as the pilot project in 2009. This paper focused on the report of the quantitative results. A total of 798 respondents participated in the survey. There were 148 teachers and 650 students. The findings showed that both teachers and students agreed that the objectives were important. Lack of Time and lack of support in the practice of human rights was found to be the challenges among teachers and students. The results also demonstrated the ways to overcome the challenges were that school stakeholders must practice human rights. Subsequently, T-test was conducted for each component to provide a comparison of the experience between teachers and students towards the implementation of the ATHAM project. There were no major differences in terms of teachers and students experience toward the objective, challenges and ways to overcome challenges in the ATHAM program. Nevertheless, the results indicated that the schools had benefited from the program. This study informed and motivated the various stakeholders to promote the implementation of Human Rights in education.