Training and Further Education

The John Dewey Research Center for the Didactics of Democracy develops needs-based training and continuing education programs for those active in the field of extracurricular political youth and adult education.

A) TRAINING

What do you actually need to be able to do if you want to provide political education? This is a question that is not so easy to answer. For political education in schools, there are specialized training courses with subject-specific state requirements. For extracurricular political youth and adult education, there are few systematic considerations and also few profession-specific binding offers (exceptions confirm the rule - for example, the European Youth Education and Youth Meeting Center Weimar (EJBW), a member of the Working Group of German Educational Institutions (AdB), regularly offers a summer academy entitled "Working Field Political Education", which we can highly recommend).

If you would like to take a look at the inner workings of professional practice in political education, you will find what you are looking for on the politischbilden.de platform. The platform offers a wide range of freely usable educational materials (OER - Open Educational Resources) for people from educational practice who are interested in and committed to dealing with political education content and are looking for methodological approaches, background information or contact persons and/or partner organizations for cooperation projects. It is coordinated and managed by the AdB office as part of a partnership with the Respekt Coaches federal program and offers a place to find information, orientation and exchange on topics of civic education and to network with stakeholders with their specific thematic expertise. The materials and stakeholders represented there provide a good insight and overview of the topics as well as the tasks and fields of application of professional practice in the field of non-formal civic education.

The German Institute for Adult Education, together with the Federal Committee for Civic Education (bap), presented a paper back in 2014 that aims to answer the question of what professionals in the field of non-formal political youth and adult education should be able to do. But where can these skills be acquired?

At JoDDiD, we try to make a small contribution to teaching these skills and offer regular training courses in the adult education, social work and educator training degree programs. We are currently working on these offers. If you are interested in a cooperation, please do not hesitate to contact us.

B) FURTHER EDUCATION

Those active in the field of political youth and adult education are generally not qualified in didactics. They predominantly have qualifications in social and cultural sciences, sometimes also in social education or completely different fields, and usually acquire the necessary skills to deal with the challenges of mediation in the field of political or democratic education "on the job". To date, there has been a rather sporadic and unsystematic offer to acquire subject-specific didactic qualifications while working. For example, the Federal Committee for Civic Education (bap), one of JoDDiD's partner organizations, offers a platform entitled Profession politische Bildung, which provides clear basic texts on a number of fundamental issues. The Arbeitskreis deutscher Bildungsstätten (AdB) also offers regular training events for educational practitioners. We can definitely recommend these offers. JoDDiD is also developing in-depth and asynchronous further education offers for those active in the field of extracurricular political youth and adult education at TU Dresden. One of our new formats is the evening school.

THE EVENING SCHOOL

With the foundation of the JoDDiD Evening School, a systematic offer for didactic qualification is to be developed, which not only offers further training courses based on the latest scientific findings, but also makes recipes for success from the practical field visible.

Concept

The evening school is essentially based on two formats:

• In the so-called Prof-Lectures, the latest findings from the field of political and democratic didactics research are prepared in such a way that they are offered in attractive, highly visualized short lectures. The lectures are available digitally for asynchronous learning and can be taken individually or as a certified course at your own pace while working.
• In addition to the classic or academic Prof-Lectures, the evening school also offers peer lectures, in which stakeholders who are particularly successful in the field of political youth and adult education share specific practical knowledge. These lectures are also highly visualized and digitally available for asynchronous learning.

DIGITAL STANDARD COURSES

Corona challenged us all - in fact, it was almost unbearable. However, we must not overlook the opportunities that have arisen as a result of this crisis. The courses offered by the Chair of Didactics of Civic Education have been completely digital since then. People can take part in digital events regardless of their location. It is therefore quite possible for specialists from the field of civic education in and out of school to take part in university courses and discuss with student teachers how we can advance civic education in the federal state. Simply contact us if you are interested and we will see what we can make possible.