Student protests: conceptualising civil and political rights in education

Children across Thailand began to protest against educational issues and were demanding that their teachers respected their rights in schools. To conduct this research, I began working with a Young Persons Research Advisory Group (YPRAG) formed of Thai young people who had protested at school. Working with the YPRAG, we honed research aims and designed data collection methods intending to seek the opinions and experiences of Thai teachers who had supported students who protested.

For many reasons, the empirical research could not be completed and so I focused my study on the development of a conceptual framework that considers children’s rights, democracy and education in the context of protest.<br><br>The research contributes to the existing literature about human rights education from a new perspective that relays the challenge children themselves are illuminating through their protest: respect for their civil and political rights in schools.

To make this contribution, the thesis delves deeper into the purposes of children as political actors in a democratic society, and the philosophical aims of education through the lens of democracy and children’s rights.<br><br>The thesis concludes by presenting an application of the framework, with the intent to demonstrate how it can be used as a conceptual lens to better understand how children’s civil and political rights and education rights are or can be met during their protests, and to examine its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for further development.<br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2027.</i>