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The global Clinical Legal Education (CLE) movement transcends borders as law teachers worldwide try to inculcate law students and future legal practitioners with social justice values. One method of achieving this is through developing reflective practitioners. Kolb, finding common ground in the work of Lewin, Dewey, and Piaget, formulated the four stages in the experiential development of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experiment. Although Kolb’s model is used in legal education literature, students may not be provided with the relevant conceptual tools required to engage in reflective practice. This often results in students providing subjective analysis of their work, which fails to fully contribute to their educational experience. One of the reasons for omitting analytical tools is that reflective practice suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. According to Kinsella, the “concept remains elusive, is open to multiple interpretations, and is applied in a myriad of ways in educational and practice environments”. A further issue hindering reflective practice relates to Donald Schön’s critique of the positivist approach adopted by law schools.

This chapter will apply a human rights framework to CLE to develop reflective practitioners. The two main reasons for this are, first, human rights as formulated by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights are universal, interrelated, and indivisible and, second, reflection based on these universal human rights values will benefit cross-jurisdictional societies in assisting vulnerable clients affected by emerging implied and direct human rights challenges.

The Sustainable Development Goals promoted by United Nations (UN) advocate that education is a fundamental right for human beings, and free universal primary education should be accessible to all regardless of gender or country of origin. Education on human rights aims to provide information on fundamental rights, equality and being non-discriminatory in nature by having its universal appeal. Learners should be exposed to human rights education and to relate it to their cultural context and build on real-life experience. Students should be encouraged to foster participation in creating a learning environment free from fear and upholds empowerment and human rights values. Universities and faculty members play a vital role in imparting education that helps build a strong foundation of society where people are respected and treated equally and gets equal opportunity for upward social mobility while protecting the dignity of such rights. This book addresses the role of education to uplift people out of poverty and oppression by imparting social justice education at the institution and the community level. Chapters are dedicated to human rights education which talks about fostering a sense of awareness among learners about the dignity of human life through various interventional programs. Such rights are discussed with respect to migrant workers, foster youth and prisoners in different countries and how students from all levels can benefit from such education.