What political education is or could be

What is this episode about?
This first piece of evening school content is about an initial approach to our subject matter: political education. At the center of the article is the thesis that the educational biographical experiences of those responsible for education play a really important role in the design of (political) education programs. For those active in the field of extracurricular political youth and adult education, this raises the question of what previous experience they bring to their professional work and what direction their programs take as a result.

Before we get started:
At around 35 mins, the episode is an average-length evening school episode. It is designed for dialog and thrives on initiating reflection processes. This is why there are more questions than answers in this episode.

The central question is:
How can we succeed in preparing and planning educational processes for people who are completely different from ourselves?

Who am I listenting 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.

Literature for further reading:

Autorengruppe Fachdidaktik (2016): What is good political education, Schwalbach.

Besand, Anja (2009): 12 years of professional experience - the special situation of teacher training as a challenge for subject-specific didactic training. In: Sowi-Online. Journal für Sozialwissenschaften, issue Ausbildungsdidaktiken, pp. 46-56.

Besand, Anja (2009): Politics - No thanks. Problems with the visibility of politics. In: Oberreuter, Heinrich (ed.): Determining the position of political education, Schwalbach, pp. 253-266.

Besand, Anja (2016): On the relationship between emotionality and professionalism in civic education. In: Heinrich Böll Foundation (ed.): Ideologies of inequality, Berlin, pp. 77-83.

Gruschka, Andreas (2002): Didactics. The cross with mediation, Weilerswist.

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 reflect on your thoughts or - if you want to obtain a certificate of further education - to prepare for the course exam.

Question 1: With regard to your own educational biography, describe the conditions under which you learn best. What consequences do you draw from this when you think about your work in political education/democratic work and how do you support recipients who are very different from you?

Question 2: To what extent has your idea of what civic education changed since you have been working in this field? What ideas did you have at the beginning of your work and what aspects of this concept have you had to change?

Question 3: To what extent do the expectations of the people (target groups) you work with in projects differ from the expectations you yourself (previously) had (or have) of educational programs? How do you deal with this difference?

Question 4: If you had to find a metaphor for your ideas of what political education is or could be and therefore also for your own work in this area, which one would you choose? Please give reasons for your choice!

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 greatly.