Why civic and vocational education go together

What is this episode about?
Welcome to another episode of the John Dewey Evening School. We have another important episode for you today. Today we want to look at the potential that vocational training offers for civic education. This episode is important to us because it took us a while to understand the diverse structures of vocational education - it's not exactly clear. But after a while we managed to do that and we realized what a treasure lies hidden in this area and we want to make it visible today.

Before we start:
Like most evening school episodes, the episode is just under 30 minutes long and is based very much on findings from Monitor politische Bildung - which we also strongly recommend for in-depth reading.

The central question is:
How can cooperation between extracurricular political youth and adult education and vocational training succeed? What do we need to know and where is there concrete potential?

Who speaks?
The author and speaker in this episode is Prof. Dr. Anja Besand, Director of the John Dewey Research Center and 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:

Behrens, Rico/Besand, Anja/Breuer, Stefan (2021): Politische Bildung in reaktionären Zeiten - Plädoyer für eine standhafte Schule, Frankfurt. Titel als kostenfreies E-Bookzugänglich  

Besand, Anja: Monitor politische Bildung an beruflichen Schulen, Schalbach/Ts. 2014

Besand, Anja/Hölzel, Tina (2018): „Ich mag auch die, die kompliziert sind.“ – Von Zuständigkeit und Zuwendung, in: Sonderpädagogische Förderung heute Sonderheft: inklusive Didaktik der politischen Bildung 

Besand, Anja/Hölzel, Tina (2018): Von einem wünschenswerten Dialog oder: Was die allgemeinbildenden Schulen von berufsbildenden im Umgang mit Heterogenität und Vielfalt lernen können, in: Langer Anke (Hrsg.) Inklusion S. 190-198 

BMFSFJ (2020): 16. Kinder- und Jugendbericht, Stärkung demokratischer Bildung im Kinder- udn Jugendalter, Berlin Der Bericht hat ein eigenes Kapitel zum Potenzial beruflicher Bildung das wir sehr empfehlen - online zugänglich

 JuRe-Fachpublikation 2021 Schüler*innenpartizipation an berufsbildenden Schulen - online 

Self-assessment tasks

For users of the evening school, we provide self-assessment tasks for each lecture. These tasks can be used to rethink 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: The field of vocational training is not exactly defined. How would you describe this area and which starting points or areas do you think would be particularly beneficial for cooperation between vocational and civic  education?

Question 2: In our evening school play, we focus in particular on the area of the vocational transition system. It is not exactly easy to make civic education suitable here. Outline a project or approach that you would choose for this area of activity.

Question 3: In case you already have experience with civic education in the context of vocational education - how would you describe the specific challenges?

Question 4: In our piece on political and vocational education, we particularly promote teachers and trainers as a target group for civic education programs. What experience do you have in this area and what strategies do you think are promising here?

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.

You can find a manuscript of this piece here.