Inclusion, Experience of Human Rights, and Education in Values in Humanist Training

Abstract

This article presents the development of an exploratory research project conducted from 2018 to 2019. The project’s purpose was to determine how human rights and values are present in some courses of the Center for General Studies (CEG), the Costa Rican Humanistic College, and the CEG's Master's Degree in Humanism, Society and Environment. The study was part of the activities of Education in Values and Human Rights Project in Teacher Training, of the German Cooperation Agency (DAAD), developed by the University of Ösnabruck, the University of Costa Rica, and the National University (CEG-CIDE). During 2019, each university performed the documentary analysis of the programs and applied the focus groups and the questionnaires in selected academic units. For the documentary analysis, the National University worked with the programs of the Costa Rican Humanistic High School courses, which can be eligible for a transfer credit process at the General Studies Center; those courses corresponded to the 2018 in-depth program and were part of a pilot plan. The National University also worked with the programs of the Center for General Studies and of the Master in Humanism, Society and Environment. The results show that human rights and values topics are implicitly present in most of the programs analyzed. It is recommended to make these issues explicit and to address them intentionally in the courses, so as to achieve greater coherence between humanist theory and practice in the classroom.