When is political education good?
© Joddid
What is this episode about?
This episode is about quality criteria for political education and how they should be understood. This is the "Beutelsbacher Konsens" on the one hand, and the didactic principles and central educational goals on the other. That sounds very boring - but it's not. Because all principles and concepts are presented using examples and related to the practice-oriented question of how political education succeeds - or conversely, where it fails. From our point of view, this is one of the most central consequences for evening school beginners and is extremely fundamental for everything that follows.
Before it starts:
This episode is - as we actually want it to be - exactly 30 minutes long. On the one hand, it is structured in a dialogical way and encourages reflection - on the other hand, it contains some central overviews of quality criteria for political education that are extremely fundamental. That is why we also offer a short handout for this episode.
The central question is this:
As the title suggests, it is about the question of when civic education is good and what can be used as a guide to make it successful. In order to answer this question, however, the question of when political education is bad is also addressed first. Because according to Dewey, the bad is the good that is rejected. We found that particularly exciting.
Who am I listening to?
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.
Lecture material
Handout with overviews
Literature and links for further reading:
Autorengruppe Fachdidaktik (2016): What is good political education, Schwalbach.
Besand, Anja (2020): Political education under pressure, in: APuZ 14/15-2020, pp. 4-9.
Besand, Anja (2020): Kollaterales Lernen oder warum formale Bildungsprozesse immer auch informell sind, in: Bade, Gesine et al. (eds.): Politische Bildung - vielfältig und kontrovers, Frankfurt, pp. 53-67.
Behrens, Rico/ Besand, Anja/ Breuer, Stefan (2021): Political education in reactionary times, Frankfurt.
Oelkers, Jürgen (2000): John Dewey - Democracy and Education, Weinheim.
Sander, Wolfgang (2007): Discovering Politics - Living Freedom, Schwalbach Ts.
The Federal Committee for Political Education has included a nice dossier on the question of how good political education works and in particular on the Beutelsbach Consensus in its professionalization platform "Profession Political Education"
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 continuing education certificate - to prepare for the course exam.
Question 1: The beginning of the lecture is about poor political education - can you think of any bad examples of this yourself and what can be learned from these examples?
Question 2: This piece is also about the "Beutelsbacher Konsens". Why does this consensus have such a central position in the subject and is it not long outdated or at least in need of revision? What additions/changes or reforms would you suggest in this context and why?
Question 3: When you look at the set of didactic principles presented here, is there anything missing? Are there any principles that are particularly important for your work that are not included here? What would they be and why?
Question 4: You can talk about didactic principles for a long time and yet it sometimes remains somewhat theoretical. Go to our EINFACH GUT GEMACHT platform and select three projects that illustrate three didactic principles of your choice very well. Give reasons for your choice!
Question 5: There is a math error in the piece - did you see?
The self-assessment tasks are to be understood as opportunities for reflection and generally do not test knowledge. They are always strongly related to the corresponding lecture and therefore differ significantly.
You can find a manuscript for this piece here.