Roland Reichenbach / Ludwig Pongratz
Introduction
Carsten Bünger/Ralf Mayer
Experience – Growth – Democracy? Educational-theoretical questions concerning Dewey’s concept of democracy and its programmatic reception
In the more recent „democracy-pedagogical“ conception of political education supplements and alternatives to cognition-oriented political instruction are sought in order to promote cooperative concepts of action. In this context, the concept of experience gains a programmatic status which is explained by drawing on the pragmatic theory of democracy developed by Dewey. The authors examine Dewey’s conception of democracy as a communal and shared experience with regard to the relevant democracy-pedagogical reception. It becomes evident that the ambivalent aspects of Dewey’s conception – such as the idea of „directness“, of „growth“ and of democracy as the ideal of the community – are not only reproduced, but even intensified.
Bettina Lösch
International and European Conditions of Political Education – On the critique of European Citizenship Education
In the course of the internationalization and Europeanization of political and economic processes the conditions of political education are changing, – conditions which have so far been oriented by the nation-state on both the institutional and the content-related level. Estimations of the situation vary in so far as the (transformation-) processes are regarded as either opening up new possibilities for political education or as, on the contrary, further limiting the established practice. The author sketches a few European initiatives which do have an effect on the institutional and content-related orientation of political education. The understanding of democracy inherent in European Citizenship Education is discussed and a broadened perspective of a Global Citizenship Education is opened up. A critical political education, such as forms the conceptual basis of this study, pursues a world perspective transcending a Europe-centered point of view, trying to overcome old mechanisms of exclusion typical of the nation-state, and starting from a differentiated concept of the subject and of democracy.
Sibylle Reinhardt
School Life and Teaching – Only in correlation do they educate both politically and democratically
The post-war controversy on social or political education was repeated five decades later as a controversy about a Bund-Länder Commission model program. Studies of the last ten years show that social learning does not simultaneously signify or bring about political learning because the spheres of the private and of the public differ. The central competence in the domain of democracy is the ability to deal with conflict, which – as a principle of controversy and in addition to the passage from the social to the political – marks the special didactic principles of political education. The same course of development may be taken by projects of service learning and of the model program outlined by the Bund-Länder Commission.
Horst Biedermann/Roland Reichenbach
Empirical Research on Political Education and the Concept of the Competence to Reach Political Judgments
In comparison to other fields of research, the state of the art in research on political education within the German-speaking countries is somewhat meager. In a first step, the authors present conceptions and core results of some of the existing research studies. Without making a claim to be exhaustive, a representative survey on the state of the art in research is given from a quantitative point of view. What is lacking so far are convincing competence-theoretically designed concepts which could promote empirical research on political education. Thus, there is hardly any consensus with regard to the definition of political competence and its gradations. Therefore, in a second step, the authors underline the need for theoretically grounded studies on the construct of the competence to reach political judgments.
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Jaap Dronkers/Silvia Avram
Choice and Effectiveness of Private and Public Schools in seven countries. A reanalysis of three PISA dat sets
In international comparative studies on academic achievement, the distinction between private government-dependent schools and private-independent schools has proven to be particularly important for understanding the differences in the effectiveness of the private and public school sectors. Despite the fact that higher achievement scores in the private sector are mainly due to their intake selectivity, private-dependent schools still tend to outperform public school in most countries if these differences are taken into account. Using a more rigorous statistical technique to control for selectivity in the analysis of three PISA data sets, it is demonstrated that the substantive advantage in the efficacy of private-dependent schools compared to public schools remains for Germany and the Netherlands.
Thomas Olk/Karsten Speck
What can be achieved by social work at schools? Theoretical concepts and empirical findings at the section between formal and non-formal education
In the educational-political reform plans of the last few years (e.g. the federal all-day schooling program), different forms of cooperation between institutions of help for young people and schools have increasingly gained in significance. However, empirically solid knowledge on the effects of this cooperation is still rather limited. Taking as an example social work at schools, which is considered the closest form of cooperation between institutions of help for young people and schools, the authors analyze the state of knowledge on the effects, the interrelations of these effects, and the limits of the cooperation between institutions of help for adolescents and schools in the shape of action programs for school-related social work. By means of a meta-analysis of available empirical studies, the insights that have been generated so far as well as the deficits and blind spots of existing research and the subject-related and methodological challenges in future research on the effects and the use of social work are discussed.
Klaus Zierer
Eclectics in Pedagogics. Essential features of a common method
Although eclectics is not used as a technical term in pedagogics, as can be verified by looking into relevant encyclopedias, it still keeps coming up as an important concept in the major debates. It seems that an eclectic procedure is indispensable in questions of education and upbringing. Every pedagogue, regardless of whether he or she is a practitioner or a theoretician, has to be an eclectic – thus the central thesis of the present article. On the basis of a comparative analysis of both national and international studies, the author substantiates his thesis in order to then formulate the essential features of an eclectic method. In this, his starting point is August Hermann Niemeyer as the primus inter pares of eclectics in pedagogics.