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Student protests: conceptualising civil and political rights in education Sarah Genevieve Heard (24169917) PUREID: 641881148 Children's rights children's rights based approach education rights civil and political rights protest human rights education This doctoral thesis focuses on the intersection between children’s education rights and their civil and political rights in the context of school protests. The research seeks to conceptualise how teachers can contribute to schools becoming environments in which children feel capable and safe to express their civil and political rights, such as through protest. Children’s involvement in protests at school, as a legitimate expression of their civil and political rights, has become more visible in recent years emphasising the need for further examination of education and educators’ roles in respecting, protecting and fulfilling the civil and political rights of young people. The impact of teachers on children’s protest is a critical area requiring further research because teachers are duty-bearers of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and thus they are legally required to make efforts to implement children’s rights in their pedagogical and pastoral practices. The research is set in the growing political tensions that resulted in the 2020/21 White Ribbon protests across Thailand. 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. 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. 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. Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2027. 2026-10-01T16:24:17Z Text Thesis 10.17034/32641305.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Student_protests_conceptualising_civil_and_political_rights_in_education/32641305 All Rights Reserved Open Access after 2027-07-31