Political and Citizenship Education

Political and Citizenship Education
Author: Stephanie Wilde
Publisher: Symposium Books Ltd
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2005-05-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1873927991

This volume examines both concepts and realities of citizenship education from various international and research perspectives. It is divided into two main sections. The first group of chapters are all by researchers closely associated with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) study into citizenship education and focus on the findings reported in the study as well as on the processes of the study itself and the indications for the future. The second group of chapters report on research projects and complement the insights of the first group of chapters. Whereas Part One involves broadly quantitative empirical data, Part Two features chapters with a more qualitative approach. The chapters have a broad geographical range, including the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic and Germany. They also report on a variety of different data sets, use different research approaches, and include findings from the large-scale IEA study as well as a personal account of a research network and two qualitative studies.

Citizenship Education in Germany

Citizenship Education in Germany
Author: Stephanie Wilde
Publisher: Symposium Books Ltd
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1873927541

This volume focuses on cross-curricular and extra-curricular activities within the broader context of citizenship education in secondary schools in Germany. It sets out the background and history of citizenship education in Germany before moving on to selected case studies of specific activities in secondary schools in different federal states in eastern and western Germany. These case studies focus on activities centred on two main topics – intercultural education and the National Socialist period in Germany. These activities are not part of formal schooling, but rather represent examples of young people and teachers engaging in citizenship education beyond the classroom – or, in a positive sense, 'not doing it by the book'.

Teaching Civics

Teaching Civics
Author: Sibylle Reinhardt
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3847408518

Around the world, teaching civics is our most practical tool for learning about democracy. In Germany, the art of civics education is constantly being reconsidered and revised, in part because of the country’s history and the widespread awareness in German society of the dangers posed by education failing to do its job. The aim of this book is to provide educators with a varied and theoretically robust repertoire of professional strategies that are grounded in the social sciences.

“Intention is not method, belief is not evidence”

“Intention is not method, belief is not evidence”
Author: Dr. Antje Gansewig
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2023-01-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3658397764

For over 20 years, school interventions involving former right-wing extremists have been popular in Germany. In practice, they are advertised and conducted as both civic education and extremism prevention. This book uses an evidence-based and interdisciplinary approach to examine the potentials and challenges of this format. It provides a thematic embedding of German application, a comprehensive review of attributed impact assumptions and the state of related research. Furthermore, this research offers highly valuable, unique and comprehensive insights based on empirical evidence. It thus contributes to a better understanding of the format and its complexity. Overall, the findings give no clear indication that the involvement of former right-wing extremists in schools initiate civic education processes or prevent political extremism. Rather, the investigation found fundamental needs for additional research, modification, and sensitization. In this vein, this book makes a pioneer contribution to quality assurance and evaluation research in civic education and extremism prevention.

The Twilight of Constitutionalism?

The Twilight of Constitutionalism?
Author: Petra Dobner
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-01-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191633666

The concepts and values that underpin traditional constitutionalism are increasingly being challenged by political realities that place substantial power beyond the state. Among the few certainties of a global economy is the growing incongruity between the political (the world of things that need to be ordered collectively in order to sustain society) and the state (the major institution of authoritative political decision-making during modern times). The consequences, and possible remedies, of this double disjunction of politics and state and of state and constitution form the centre of an open debate about 'constitutionalism beyond the state'. The essays gathered in this collection explore the range of issues raised by this debate. The effects of recent changes on two of the main building blocks of constitutionalism - statehood and democracy - are examined in Parts I and II. Since the movement of overcoming statehood has, arguably, been advanced furthest in the European context, the question of the future of constitutionalist ideas in the framework of the EU provides the key theme of Part III. The remaining parts consider possible transformations or substitutes. The engagement of constitutions with international law offers one line of transmutation of constitutionalism (Part IV) and the diffusion of constitutionalism into separate social spheres provides an alternative way of pursuing constitutionalism in a new key (Part VI). Finally, the ability of the theory of global administrative law (examined in Part V) to offer an alternative account of the potential of jurisdictional control of global governing processes is examined. Through these explorations, the book offers cross-disciplinary insights into the impact of recent political and economic changes on modern constitutionalism and an assessment of the prospects for constitutionalism in a transnational environment.

Neither Good Nor Bad

Neither Good Nor Bad
Author: Gerhard Besier
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2014-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 144386191X

When confronted by a range of violent actions perpetrated by lone individuals, contemporary society exhibits a constant tendency to react in terms of helpless, even perplexed horror. Seeking explanations for the apparently inexplicable, commentators often hurry to declare the perpetrators as “evil”. This question is not restricted to individuals: history has repeatedly demonstrated how groups and even entire nations can embark on a criminal plan united by the conviction that they were fighting for a good and just cause. Which circumstances occasioned such actions? What was their motivation? Applying a number of historical, scientific and social-scientific approaches to this question, this study produces an integrative portrait of the reasons for human behavior and advances a number of different interpretations for their genesis. The book makes clear the extent to which we live in socially-constructed realities in which we cling for dear life to a range of conceptions and beliefs which can all too easily fall apart in situations of crisis.

Blood and Culture

Blood and Culture
Author: Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2009-08-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822391147

Over the past decade, immigration and globalization have significantly altered Europe’s cultural and ethnic landscape, foregrounding questions of national belonging. In Blood and Culture, Cynthia Miller-Idriss provides a rich ethnographic analysis of how patterns of national identity are constructed and transformed across generations. Drawing on research she conducted at German vocational schools between 1999 and 2004, Miller-Idriss examines how the working-class students and their middle-class, college-educated teachers wrestle with their different views about citizenship and national pride. The cultural and demographic trends in Germany are broadly indicative of those underway throughout Europe, yet the country’s role in the Second World War and the Holocaust makes national identity, and particularly national pride, a difficult issue for Germans. Because the vocational-school teachers are mostly members of a generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and hold their parents’ generation responsible for National Socialism, many see national pride as symptomatic of fascist thinking. Their students, on the other hand, want to take pride in being German. Miller-Idriss describes a new understanding of national belonging emerging among young Germans—one in which cultural assimilation takes precedence over blood or ethnic heritage. Moreover, she argues that teachers’ well-intentioned, state-sanctioned efforts to counter nationalist pride often create a backlash, making radical right-wing groups more appealing to their students. Miller-Idriss argues that the state’s efforts to shape national identity are always tempered and potentially transformed as each generation reacts to the official conception of what the nation “ought” to be.