A Study of Teacher Candidates’ Views on Children’s Human Rights in Canada

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to adapt a pre-existing measure (Karaman-Kepenekci, 2006) to assess teacher candidates’ views about children’s human rights in Canada. Karaman-Kepenekci’s survey was originally administered in Turkey with results published in the International Journal of Children’s Rights. To benchmark our results against Karaman-Kepenekci’s findings, we adapted and administered the survey to a sample of 174 teacher candidates in Canada. Participants’ gender, age, ethnicity, experience with children and enrolment in a human rights course were measured. The psychometric properties of the adapted survey and teacher candidates’ views are reported. An exploratory factor analysis with direct oblimin rotation led to complementary but different results compared to Karaman-Kepenekci’s (2006) findings. In particular, two factors were found to underlie survey responses – one involving rights of children and another involving government responsibility. Hierarchical linear regression of factor scores indicated that, among participant characteristics, only gender and ethnicity were predictive of responses.