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This book focuses on human rights education (HRE) in higher education, with an emphasis on supporting undergraduate education for social justice and global citizenship at the institutional, classroom, and community levels. Drawing from the work of human rights scholars and advocates at Webster University, Kingston begins a critical discussion about the potential of HRE on college campuses and beyond. Chapter contributors address the institutional issues inherent to building a "human rights campus," promoting just governance models, facilitating student research, and fostering inclusive campus communities. They further explores opportunities within the classroom by highlighting dynamic courses on global sustainable development and post-genocide reconciliation in Rwanda, as well as considering how to create trauma sensitive learning spaces and utilize photography as a human rights teaching tool. Finally, scholar-advocates detail how HRE can be expanded to include the broader community-including teaching critical criminology to aspiring police officers, facilitating community dialogue through academic conferences, and engaging in social justice work related to access to justice, domestic violence, and human trafficking

This article is a product of the author's PhD Thesis, which investigated what teachers in the early years of elementary school think (and do) about the use of Information and Communication Technologies - ICT in the educational context. The research was conducted in a public school in the city of Fortaleza, Ceara State, and the data collected consists of discussions held in focus groups, with teachers and managers of the institution. The analyses were made from theoretical references of Educommunication, a field of research in expansion in Brazil, which defends the idea that educating must necessarily be a democratic and participatory act. The prevalence among educators of a discourse of fear and control over the use of ICT in school was verified through the promotion of a centralizing and authoritarian use of ICT during classes.

The subject of quality has been a pervasive issue on the agenda in higher education around the world for more than a decade. A greater focus on quality in higher education resulted from a range of competing factors, among the most prominent were: political control over higher education (exerted particularly by national governments), the growth in the number of students in higher education (including general changes in the student population and their expectations) and financial control on the part of national governments (frequently related to the previous two factors). Quality monitoring has become a mechanism for governments worldwide to tackle these competing factors. However, at the same time, it can be argued that it was frequently employed to disguise the dominant focus on accountability in higher education rather than on enhancement. Many of the quality assurance models and systems applied to higher education originated in the business and manufacturing sectors. They have often been found unsuitable or only partially suitable for the higher education sector, because they largely disregarded the nature of higher education and its employees, in particular the academics. It may be argued that the quality movement has driven higher education more towards greater uniformity, which may be detrimental to what was understood as the "real" quality in higher education. For instance, innovation was regarded as an important aspect of academic work. Nevertheless, the present quality development drive seems to be working against the nature of academic work. Given this background, it is alarming that the academic voice seems to have had little impact to date on the development of quality systems in higher education. Therefore, the present thesis attempted to investigate the academic voice concerning higher education quality. Overall, this thesis had two main objectives. First, based on the analysis of stories of academics and higher education leaders, the thesis endeavoured to construct a framework of significant quality issues for the potential use in future policy development in higher education in the two countries investigated in this research (the Czech Republic and England), and prospectively in other higher education systems around the world. In particular, it aimed to introduce more human-centred measures into the area of higher education quality. Second, in terms of developing a methodology, the thesis attempted to illustrate the way in which a critical event narrative inquiry study of heterogeneous and complex environments, such as higher education, could be undertaken. Employing such a critical event narrative inquiry approach, the researcher endeavoured to highlight important aspects of higher education quality, which have been largely overlooked in the area, and thus assist the improvement of the practice of quality development in higher education. The study utilised face-to-face interviews with academics and higher education leaders concerning their perceptions of the issue of higher education quality. The researcher anticipated that eliciting of "critical events" through interviews with individuals involved in the area of quality in higher education (academics and higher education leaders) would uncover some important aspects in higher education quality which would not be revealed using other more traditional empirical methods of inquiry, particularly quantitative research methods. To investigate the area of higher education quality, the researcher elected to look into the English and Czech higher education systems. The choice of the English higher education system was influenced by the knowledge that England, and more generally the UK, was among the first countries in the world, and certainly the first in Europe, to introduce a formal quality assurance system into higher education. Australia followed this trend soon after it was introduced in the UK. The researcher elected the Czech higher education system, as a culturally different educational system, distinctive from the Anglo-Saxon educational tradition, and which is uniquely placed on the divide between Western and Eastern Europe. In this respect, the critical event narrative inquiry method was proposed as a suitable method for the investigation of significant aspects of cultural difference. Employing the critical event narrative inquiry method, the researcher uncovered a number of significant issues. Some of these issues were identified by English and Czech academics and higher education leaders as not featuring strongly in their countries' current higher education quality enhancement practices, and yet they were regarded as important by the academics. Some of the issues uncovered in this research, on the other hand, were highlighted as impacting negatively on the quality enhancement processes in their respective higher education systems. There were a number of issues which were identified as common to both the English and Czech higher education systems. These issues might have been an indication of potential wider relevance of such trends among a broader range of higher education systems worldwide. This thesis proposed a framework for a human-centred approach to quality enhancement in higher education based on issues which were common to both English and Czech higher education systems. This framework featured: • Regard for the academic voice in higher education quality policy development; • Attention to human-centred aspects of higher education quality; • Need for a collegial approach and reflection on the purposes of quality evaluation processes; • Equal value afforded to teaching and research; and • Focus on innovation and change. There were also some culture-specific issues uncovered, particularly in relation to the Czech higher education system. These culture-specific issues may be relevant to certain common trends and features in other higher education systems in Central and Eastern European regions. In this respect, the thesis proposed a framework for a human-centred approach to quality enhancement with regard to culture-specific issues. The framework focused specifically on Czech higher education and may be of potential relevance to other Central and Eastern European higher education systems. This framework included: • The significance of transparency in educational processes; • The need for a fundamental change in the style of pedagogy in higher education institutions; to focus more on thinking processes and reasoning; • The need for a more systematic move towards a student-centred approach across the whole higher education system; • The need to address the factor of pressure on Czech academics to publish mainly in English in order to receive international recognition; and • The need for education of Czech academic staff to enable a broader and better understanding of the concept of higher education quality in the context of the Czech higher education system. Investigation of the academic voice in English higher education did not reveal any culture-specific issues. In other words, the English academics and higher education leaders did not identify any issues in higher education quality that were distinctively different from the general issues highlighted also by Czech academics and higher education leaders. Some of the issues pointed out in the English context occurred on a more advanced level due to the different historical, political and socio-economic context of the UK higher education. It appears that quality in higher education is here to stay. As such, it is essential for the future of higher education that quality enhancement be based on education-focused approaches. Overall, this thesis proposed a human-centred approach to quality enhancement as one way of attaining educational focus.

Introduction. The article examines the formation and development of political systems in the former eleven republics of the USSR from the standpoint of the institutional transformations taking place there. The struggle for power between various elite groups and citizens' identities and the dynamics of citizens' identities were also the basis for comparison. The authors consider the parameters mentioned to make the comparison and typology of the modern post-Soviet states' development more effective. Methods and Materials. The neoinstitutional, sociological, and political-cultural approaches were used in the research, as were the comparative-historical and comparative-typological methods, which made it possible to scrutinize the available facts and draw respective conclusions. Analysis. It was stated that starting in the 1980s, the transformation of the typical Soviet republics took place in two directions. The first included the formation of the electoral autocracies, institutional design, and social and cultural image, which were determined by the "nucleus" – the president-leader. Such political dynamics turned out to be characteristic of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Belarus. The formation of the "front-end democracies" was the second direction. These democracies are characterized by institutional, social, and identity fragmentation hiding behind the glass cases of democratic structures and practices borrowed from the West. Kirghizia, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, and Moldavia have moved in this direction. Results. The authors' conclusion is that both the first and second directions do not ensure the stable development of new independent states in the foreseeable future. Authors' contribution. A.V. Abramov formulated the concept of the article, developed the comparison parameters, and studied the post-Soviet elites' and citizens' struggle for power and their identity evolution. R.A. Alekseev analyzed the transformation of the political institutions in the post-Soviet political systems in the context of their constitutional reforms.

Since comparative educationists and education systems experts are expected to advise governments and departments of education regarding the transformation of education in their countries and also because they have an intrinsic scholarly interest in political transformation and its effects on the education system, an investigation was launched into recent experiences in this regard concerning one pivotal aspect of education systems, namely education control. The transformations undergone since the early 1990s by Serbia, Croatia and South Africa were examined, particularly with respect to how the respective authorities transformed the control of education in their systems. The study yielded a number of insights that could be fruitfully applied in similar situations in future.

"Reprint, Health, Education and Welfare indicators, April 1965-February 1966." ; Mode of access: Internet.

In India, vide Right to Education Act, 2009, elementary school education has been made a fundamental right of children between the ages of 6 and 14 years. The objective is to achieve the goal of universal elementary education for all. The Right to Education Act, 2009, has also allocated 25 per cent places in private schools for socially disadvantaged children. In the course of assessing the social effect of Right to Education Act, 2009, existing literature has been analysed. Although India has measured great strides in enlisting school enrolment, some problems exist. An attempt has been made to elicit the state of school education in India by analysing the growth of private schools and the facts in state schools. Some suggestions have been made to improve the educational situation in schools in the given social circumstances.

The transformation of museums and education in the north meets the contemporary political agenda on Lifelong Learning and the implementation of the 21st Century Skills Framework and emphasise a neo-liberalisation of cultural and educational politics in the Nordic countries. The Nordic foundation on democracy establishes a fundamental backdrop for a necessary recalling of cultural and educational purposes as the Nordic dimension begins to dissolve due to the exchange of transnational and more isomorphic co-productive arrangements. In Finland, they have reformed their educational system with an emphasis on content rather than outcomes and the essential distinction between "matter and meaning" has been revitalised as it used to dominate educational and cultural settings in the Nordic countries. The shift towards outcomes in Scandinavia establishes both (old) barriers to and (new) possibilities for collaboration between Museums and Education in the North. The project Museums and Education in the North (2017-2020) is funded by the Nordic Culture Fund and the Nordic Culture Point and managed by The Nordic Centre for Heritage Learning and Creativity (NCK) in Östersund, Sweden. In collaboration with partners from four Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, the purpose, pedagogy and performance of the national initiatives become the backdrop for further discussions regarding possibilities for and barriers to collaboration between cultural and educational settings in the North.