Invisible political education at dog training

What is this episode about?
In this episode, we delve deeper into an idea that has already been addressed in the piece from target groups to rooms. However, this time it gets very concrete. We present a bold attempt to implement invisible civic education - concerted civic education at dog training. We look forward to hearing what you have to say about our field test. We found the whole thing quite exciting.

Before we get started:
Like most evening school episodes, the episode is about 30 minutes long and is based very much on a field trial we conducted in 2021/22 together with the Dresden Dog Training School.

The central question is:
How can political education contribute to social cohesion and make use of situations in which very different people come together anyway - and is it allowed to?

Who speaks?
The author and speaker in this episode is Prof. Dr. Anja Besand, Director of the John Dewey Research Centre and holder of the Chair of Didactics of Civic Education at the TUD Dresden University of Technology. You can find out more about her here.

We hope you enjoy it and look forward to your feedback.

Literature for further reading:

Besand, Anja/Hölzel, Tina/Jugel, David (2018): Inclusive political learning in the stadium - political education with unknown players and open gameplay - final report of the scientific monitoring of the Lernort Stadion project, Dresden

Besand, Anja (2004): Fear of the surface. On the relationship between aesthetic and political learning in the age of new media, Schwalbach/Ts. 2004

Besand, Anja/Overwien, Bernd/Zorn, Peter (eds.) (2019): Political education with feeling, Bonn

Besand, Anja (2020): Ist das noch/schon politische Bildung. Erkundungen im Überschneidungsfeld zwischen kultureller und politischer Bildung, In Oeftering, Tonio (ed.): Politische Bildung meets Kulturelle Bildung, Frankfurt a.M

David Jugel/Tina Hölzel/Anja Besand: Inklusion und politische Bildung - mutig gemeinsam (weiter)denken und erproben! in: Zustrassen, Bettina/Hilpert, Wolfram (eds.): Fundamentals and practice of inclusive civic education, pp. 23-37

Besand, Anja: On the difference between political judgment, obedience and civic sovereignty - political didactic observation from the crisis-related social large-scale experiment, in: Drerup, Johannes/Schweiger, Gottfried (eds.): Bildung und Erziehung im Ausnahmezustand. Philosophische Reflexionsangebote zur COVID-19-Pandemie. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG), 2020 pp. 42-54

Besand, Anja (2020) Kollateral-Lernen in der politischen BildungOder warum formale Bildungsprozesse immer auch informell sind, in: Bade, Gesine/Henkel, Nicholas/Reef, Bernd (eds.) Politische Bildung: vielfältig - kontrovers - global, Frankfurt pp. 53-67

Besand, Anja (2018): Learning from Saxony. Or what appropriate "processing strategies" for right-wing populist movements could look like, in: Bitzegeio, Ursula/Decker, Frank/Fischer, Sandra, Stolzenberg Thorsten (eds.): Flucht, Transit, Asyl - Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf ein europäisches Versprechen, Bonn 2018, pp. 394-409

Besand, Anja (2017): Von roten und von blauen Kreisen Oder: Wie kommen wir zu einer inklusiveren politischen Bildung in Transferstelle politische Bildung Jahresbericht 2016 p. 29-34

Self-assessment tasks

We provide users of the evening school with self-assessment tasks for each lecture. These tasks can be used to reconsider the contribution, to deepen your thoughts or - if you want to obtain a certificate of further education - to prepare for the course exam.

Question 1: Political education at dog training. This is an exciting idea to which many people respond positively. After all, it really is a low-threshold format that brings randomly assembled groups into conversation with each other. However, the central and highly controversial question that arises as a result of this concept is: IS IT ALLOWED? Is it allowed to make offers undercover in this way or do participants in political education offers not at least have to know that they are taking part in such an offer? Please explain under which conditions you consider such an offer to be feasible and under which not.

Question 2: In our evening school play, we once again address the challenges of putting political education at the service of social cohesion of any kind. In your opinion, how can political education contribute to social cohesion and where are the limits?

Question 3: Do you like the idea of political education at dog training? Think of comparable format ideas in comparable contexts and describe them briefly. What conditions do you think are key? And perhaps vice versa, where can such a format fail?

The self-assessment tasks are to be understood as opportunities for reflection and do not generally test knowledge. They are always strongly related to the corresponding lecture and therefore differ significantly.