Teaching children about human rights is an important step towards strengthening human rights internationally and schools are considered primary sites for children to develop human rights understandings, attitudes and behaviours. This dissertation explores the teachers’ role in educating children about their human rights. Focusing on the everyday school life of young children, a holistic approach to rights-learning is applied that includes not only learning about human rights but also developing rights-conscious values, attitudes and behaviours. Also included in the concept rights-learning is the formation of a self-conception as a rights-holder. Against this background the aim of this dissertation is to clarify the impact of teachers’ actions on the construction of young children’s rights-learning, and their self-conceptions as rights-holders.

Theoretically, the dissertation combines: (i) rights theorisation; (ii) theorisation of differing discourses of children and childhood; and (iii) Foucauldian governmentality. From these, analytical concepts of rights-learning situations, teachers’ rights-teaching mentalities and privileged rightssubject positions are constructed. The data used in the study derives from classroom observations and interviews with teachers, as well as drawing on previous research.

The findings highlight that in everyday school practice the teachers’ rights-teaching mentalities will privilege different rights-subject positions for the children and thereby construct children’s rights-learning in different ways. With a holistic approach to rights-learning, as something that occurs in various interactions and situations in everyday school life, the findings presented in this dissertation can provide new perspectives and enrich discussions on teaching and learning children’s human rights.