Civic education in the daycare center

What is this episode about?
In this peer lecture, Jens Hoffsommer talks about daycare centers as places of civic education. He explains what requirements there are for educators from the perspective of civic education and what support would be desirable here. He also explains the formal framework of this field of work. This part focuses on the challenges of civic education with a very young target group. In doing so, he addresses current issues: How do I react as an educator when parents refuse to wear masks? What do I do when children bring the Fridays for Future movement into the kindergarten? And what does attitude have to do with it?

Before we get started:
The episode ,,Civic Education in Day Care Centers'' is about 30 min long, which is the length of an average evening school play. It is structured around questions and is therefore quite entertaining, in our opinion.

The central question is:
How can civic education offers look like and succeed that are aimed at extremely young target groups and what all needs to be considered?

Who am I listening to?
Jens Hoffsommer is Regional Director of the German Children and Youth Foundation for the federal states of Saxony and Bavaria.

In more detail on the topic

We highly recommend watching the interview with Dr. Seyran Bostancı (NaDiRa/DeZIM) on racism in early childhood education and critically examining whether she herself is also working with concepts such as colorblindness with regard to daycare children. This provides further in-depth insights against the backdrop of current research on the subject.

Self-assessment tasks:

For users of the evening school, we provide 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 continuing education certificate - to prepare for the course exam.

Question 1: Put yourself in the position of an educator: A child comes to you and wants to talk about child poverty and would like to donate their toys to children in financial need. in regards to the lecture: What could an option for action look like that takes into account the criteria mentioned (e.g. strengths orientation, action at child level, poverty of power, etc.)?

Question 2: Explain to what extent daycare centers are places of civic education.

Question 3: Describe the relation between democracy education and early childhood education.

Question 4: Put yourself in the position of an educator: A mother wears a T-shirt with clearly right-wing extremist slogans to a parents-educater conference. You see this. Outline what options for action could look like in this situation. Tip: Pay particular attention to the passage on the concept of attitude in the lecture you have just heard.

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.

You can find the entire piece in written form here.