The Challenge of Applying a ‘Universal’ Framework: Interpreting International Education Rights Law Within Citizenship Education

Abstract

This chapter brings attention back to international human rights frameworks, analysing in more detail the findings in terms of the 2-A frameworks that education should be ‘acceptable’ and ‘adaptable’. It pinpoints the challenges that the varied interpretations offered by participants in this research imply, on two levels: firstly, on the level of interpreting international obligations in the national and divided context; and secondly, on the level of interpreting national obligations in the school context. It highlights that the assumption of the ‘universality’ of human rights law is problematic and offers as an explanation the view that the process of developing interpretative frameworks as flawed in terms of breadth of participant experience. It also considers the inevitability of interpretative variety in the school context, focusing on policy approximation and curricular transposition, and the limited achievement of international frameworks in Northern Ireland and Israel.