Reading Beyond the Written Lines of Human Rights: Collaborative Learning Communities and Learning Schools as Drivers for Educational Change

Abstract

Tese no âmbito do Programa de Doutoramento em Direitos Humanos nas Sociedades Contemporâneas, apresentada ao Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar da Universidade de Coimbra. ; Education as a right has become a crucial issue in restructuring Western democracies' educational systems. The growing tendency to discuss education from a rights-based approach makes it necessary to consider education in social transformation and claim more democratic learning territories. Collaboration, solidarity, empathy, engagement and critical thinking are rare and are increasingly difficult to establish, as reported by several authors and underlined by this study's interviewees. The school is one of the institutions of public life where common collective life practices can be built. This research aims to understand how collaborative learning communities and learning schools broaden the notion of education as a Human Right in practice and drive educational change. We suggest that learning communities contribute to the quality of the learning process and the knowledge produced within these groups should be considered a valued contribution to the learning experience. Hence, expanding groups of agents contributing to the diversification of the learning process and changing schools from teaching institutions to learning organisations contributes to thinking education as an emancipatory process. The point of departure for the discussion is the Institute for Education and Citizenship (IEC) - an institution of non-formal education that works as an intermediary between schools, universities, research centres, and Oliveira do Bairro municipality. The IEC claims for a new structure for community-based learning and research, leveraging schools-community-university partnerships' democratisation. The IEC's central role in facilitating relationships among institutions and people unrelated before, and forming a collaborative learning community, is worthy of being considered an essential educational enterprise. Methodologically, we have ...