Political didactics and political education in Germany

Abstract

The paper gives an overview of the sections of the professionalization of political didactics as an academic discipline in Germany. The first section describes the development of political education and political didactics in schools showing a process of increasing professionalization as a result of engagements with various political influences. In the next part, the beginnings of political didactics and Politics as a school subject are presented. The following part describes the professionalization phase of political didactics and teacher education, with the designation of chairs of political didactics in institutes of political science. The goals and normative ideas that individual political didactics specialists have developed for teaching politics are also discussed. For reasons of space, the previously mentioned parts and the subsequent synopses only partially cover the initial proposition. The fourth part traces the politicization and depoliticization of didactics and of the teaching of politics while the fifth part discusses practical problems that lead to a variety of new normative questions. The sixth part moves toward educational theory, in which the idea of radical constructivism is gaining ground and educationalists attempt to restructure Politics as a school subject with an emphasis on studying democracy by developing a democratic way of thinking. The seventh part is characterized by a new phenomenon, that is the start of theoretical development. The different theoretical considerations on the subject-specific competencies of teachers and pupils are discussed. In addition, the first systematically collected empirical findings on theoretically postulated dimensions of competency are presented.