Children’s Rights and Educational Psychology

Abstract

Abstract. Psychology aims to be descriptive but depends on norms and values to guide both research and practice. Educational psychology, as a sub-discipline and applied branch of psychology, focuses on describing processes of teaching, learning, and development. This article aims to connect notions of human and children’s rights with concepts of educational psychology to illustrate the interdependence of normative and descriptive frameworks. We use Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach as an operationalization to move from a normative legal framework toward concrete research topics and practices within educational and school psychology. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to feel safe, learn, participate, and form an identity. We argue that educational psychology can help to specify these normative postulations of the CRC and aid the implementation of positive rights. The phenomenon of school bullying is introduced as a specific area where children’s rights are affected. After a brief characterization of its major features from an ecological-systemic perspective, we draw on research on bullying prevention and the creation of positive learning environments to illustrate the aptness of educational psychology for realizing children’s positive rights. We conclude that educational psychology is not only able to prevent human rights infringements but also to promote children’s rights and capabilities, especially in reference to competencies, participation, and identity.