Monisha Bajaj

University of San Francisco | USFCA · International and Multicultural Education

This article examines the approaches of a public high school for newcomer youth, Oakland International High School in California, that provides holistic wrap-around services to students. By not isolating students from the larger context of their families and communities, the school’s approaches allow for greater reciprocity between school and home....

In this article, the authors discuss how one public high school became a site for socio-politically relevant pedagogy for immigrant and refugee youth, building on the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy that has been discussed in educational scholarship (Howard, 2001, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995a, 1995b). By exploring newcomer youth's und...

This article presents data from a two-year ethnographic case study to explore how immigrant and refugee youth in the United States made sense of participation in a weekly human rights club after school. Three types of student responses to human rights education are exemplified through the profiles of students. The article offers new insights on stu...

This article explores the curricular approaches of three public high schools in the US that serve newly arrived immigrant and refugee youth, in order to define and illustrate a critical transnational curriculum. Drawing from qualitative research over the past 10 years at the different school sites, the authors posit four tenets of a critical transn...

This chapter reviews the extent of influence new regionalism has had on the development of the education sector in South Asia. The history of South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) development, and its regional state-supported initiative, the South Asian University, reflect a multitude of local challenges to effective regionalizati...

In this essay, Monisha Bajaj, Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, and Karishma Desai present an evidence-based action project that seeks to interrupt and transform bullying behaviors directed at South Asian American youth in schools in the United States. In the context of this essay and project, they argue that larger macro-level forces which promote misinforma...

The challenges of ensuring the right to education are numerous, especially when working with marginalised populations in fragile contexts. Despite having the legislation, strong constitutional support, and even educational innovations designed to guarantee the right to education, a major gap exists in Colombia between political intentions and the r...

This chapter reviews the rise of human rights frameworks and discourse in global educational policymaking since World War II, with a focus on how such trends have impacted South Asian educational systems. Through the lens of policy shifts in diverse nation states on the subcontinent, the chapter charts how, for various reasons, ‘rights talk’ in edu...

In this article, we discuss our approaches, pedagogies, and practices for a weekly human rights club that serves immigrant and refugee youth. The research team is involved in a research collaboration with a public high school in a large urban area on the West Coast. In this article, we discuss some of our curricular and pedagogical strategies and s...

Background/Context Human rights education has proliferated in the past four decades and can be found in policy discussions, textbook reforms, and grassroots initiatives across the globe. This article specifically explores the role of creativity and imagination in human rights education (HRE) by focusing on a case study of one non-governmental (NGO)...

This paper explores ‘pedagogies of resistance’ - or critical and democratic educational models utilized by social movements - and how global examples of engaged educational praxis may inform peace education. The central inquiry of this article is ‘How can educational projects that resist larger social, political and economic inequalities offer unde...

Around the time I first received an invitation to contribute a chapter to this volume on junior faculty of color in the academy, my institution made headlines across the nation and the globe for a noose hung on the door of a professor of color.1 The charged and complex tensions involved in this incident focused my thinking on a more ambitious appro...

India has witnessed several monumental changes in the field of Elementary education in the last decade. The ratification of the Right of Child to Free and Compulsory Education Act in 2009 changed the policy landscape and opened up avenues for different stakeholders to have a series of opportunities to strengthen the quality dimensions of primary ed...

The passing of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (2009) provides a new policy context and a new series of opportunities to strengthening the quality dimensions of primary education in India. The Act further reinforces the suggestions made by the National Curriculum Framework of 2005. Given the recent developments where new p...

As a part of its collaboration with the Born This Way Foundation, the Berkman Center is publishing a series of papers that synthesize existing peer-reviewed research or equivalent scholarship and provide research-grounded insight to the variety of stakeholders working on issues related to youth empowerment and action towards creating a kinder, brav...

In the past three decades, the rise of human rights education (HRE) in global educational policy discourse and practice has paralleled the unrelated rise of small, independently run schools internationally that operate separately from government structures, whether they be private, charter, religious, or affiliated with non-governmental organizatio...

Schooling for Social Change offers fresh perspectives on the emerging field of human rights education in India. 60 years after independence, the Indian schooling system remains unequal. Building on over a year of fieldwork, including interviews and focus groups with policymakers, educators, parents and students, Monisha Bajaj examines different und...

As human rights education (HRE) becomes a more common feature of international policy discussions, national textbook reform, and post-conflict educational strategies, greater clarity about what HRE is, does, and means is needed. This article reviews existing definitions and models of HRE, and argues that ideology — as much as location or other vari...

This article examines approaches to environmental education in Bhopal, India. It is an attempt to understand how much environmental education as a topic has been incorporated into formal curricula. An analysis of state and national syllabi indicates a focus on conventional, natural sciences approaches to the environment, thus neglecting the social...

Background: Human rights education initiatives have proliferated in the past three decades and can be found in policy discussions, textbook reforms, and grassroots initiatives across the globe. This article specifically explores the role of teachers in human rights education (HRE) by focusing on a case study of one non-governmental (NGO) organizati...

: Efforts to interrupt the reproduction of unequal gender relations in schools involve alternative practices and pedagogies intended to transform students’ notions of gender and gender relations. Beyond the protective environments where such educational initiatives take shape, however, students must rely on their own sense of agency to reenact ne...

This article presents data collected at the level of practice to highlight one non-governmental organization’s approach to human rights education and how household, school, and community level factors mediated student impact. Findings suggest that a variety of factors at the three levels contribute to the program’s successful implementation in gove...

Abstract. Bibl.

This article examines the similarities and differences of the fields of Gandhian studies and peace education through an exploration of their content, institutional development, and globalization since the mid‐twentieth century. The methods utilized include document review of syllabi and course descriptions in Gandhian studies and peace education, a...

Incl. abstracts in English, German, French, Spanish and Russian; bibliographical references This article explores an attempt to disrupt gender inequality in a unique, low-cost private school in Ndola, Zambia. It examines deliberate school policies aimed at "undoing gender" or fostering greater gender equity. These include efforts to maintain gender...

This article examines the intersections among peace education and environmental education to understand how these commonalities frame education for sustainable development. The authors trace the intersection of the two disciplines and explore the role of the United Nations in promoting and empowering individuals with the values to advance the twin...

This study utilized in depth interviewing, participant observation, and student diaries completed by participants to examine the quality of teacher-student relationships at a low-cost private school in the townships of Ndola, Zambia. Amidst economic decline and the HIV/AIDS epidemic facing Zambia today, teachers and students developed strong relati...

This article explores the extent to which participation in alternative human values education affects students' conceptions of agency amidst the economic and HIV/AIDS crises in Ndola, Zambia. Drawing on the concept of transformative agency as developed by critical research in education, this study examines conceptions of agency based on data produc...

This study utilized in‐depth interviewing, participant observation, and student diaries completed by participants to examine the quality of teacher–student relationships at a low‐cost private school in the townships of Ndola, Zambia. Amidst economic decline and the HIV/AIDS epidemic facing Zambia today, teachers and students developed strong relati...

While this volume discusses the role of peace education in conflict and post-conflict societies, this chapter asserts that the definition of “conflict” societies should be expanded to include those societies that, while not undergoing or emerging from armed conflict, have exhibited ethnic or other social conflict that results in the widespread and...

This article explores how Zambian youth encounter HIV/AIDS in their schools and communities, and presents ways in which they demonstrate their agency in creating new language, identities, and self-conceptions in response to these encounters. Utilizing qualitative interviews, participant observation, and student diaries, this study suggests that the...

In 2001, a 3-month course in human rights based on critical inquiry was offered to 8th graders in a slum area of Santo Domingo. The students' attitudes, behaviors and knowledge of human rights principles were measured before and after the course. The curriculum focused on international principles and entrenched local problems such as discrimination...