Session Information
11 SES 08 A, Monitoring Citizenship Education in Europe and Beyond
Symposium
Contribution
Higher education influences citizenship attitudes, skills and behaviour through several pathways (Council of Europe 2020). Firstly, there is evidence for a general education effect: The additional years in education increase knowledge and communication skills. This might explain why people, who enjoyed higher education, show higher participation rates in elections and engage in political protest more often (Yang & Hoskins, 2020). Secondly, research has shown the effect of specifically designed learning opportunities: Higher education institutions provide additional learning opportunities for students on connecting themselves to the community and political life. These opportunities prevail in initiating debates on new occurring societal challenges, in institutionalised participation and in organised volunteering. For instance, service-learning schemes contribute to increased social engagement among participating students (Celio et al. 2011). Thirdly, there is only little empirical research on the effect of professionalization for civic and citizenship education (Weschenfelder 2014): Higher education institutions implement programmes for those, who want to achieve competences in teaching civic education. Mostly, the respective university courses are part of teacher education programmes. The paper presents a case study on how a monitoring on this third pathway for civic and citizenship education in higher education can be developed. The analysis is based on a feasibility study for monitoring the contribution of higher education to the domain in Germany. Given the limited resources, the selection of indicators should employ existing data sets and not require new data collection. This led to a closer inspection of two kind of data. Firstly, public statistics and databases, which are officially legitimized and strive for a complete count. They provide data on personnel, type of study programmes, student numbers and degrees. Secondly, representative surveys conducted by scientific institutions, providing data on the selectivity within the student composition, their economic living conditions or perceived competences. The paper will provide three currently developed indicators: At the input level, an indicator will be presented that measures the research base for university teaching in the field. At the process level, an indicator will be introduced that examines the content and structure of relevant university courses. On the outcome level, an indicator will be presented that relates graduate numbers of prospective civics teachers to the current need for new civics teachers with the aim of uncovering potential shortcomings. The presentation of the three indicators will address selection criteria, particular challenges, methodological considerations, and opportunities to connect with existing research.
References
Celio C. I., Durlak J. & Dymnicki,A. (2011). A meta-analysis of the impact of service-learning on students. In: Journal of Experimental Education 34(2). 164-181. Council of Europe (2020) Reference framework of competences for democratic culture. Competences for democratic culture in higher education. Strasburg: CoE. https://rm.coe.int/rfcdc-guidance-document-for-higher-education/1680a08ee0 Yang J. & Hoskins B. (2020). Does university have an effect on young people’s active citizenship in England? In: Higher Education (2020) 80. 839-856. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00518-1 Weschenfelder E. (2014). Professionelle Kompetenz von Politiklehrkräften. Eine Studie zu Wissen und Überzeugungen. [Professional competence of civic education teachers. A study on knowledge and beliefs.] Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
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