Schools, as the central educational organizations, exist against the backdrop of current cultural and social changes and must always respond to new societal challenges. In this context, democratic school development by implementing innovative democratic education approaches has become increasingly important in many European countries during the past several years. The emphasis is here especially on new networks (Berkemeyer and Järvinen 2011) emerging between different educational organizations like schools and community partners. Networks and other partnerships between those actors are understood as a strategy for social innovation in the field of school development (Brühlmann and Rolff 2015). As a consequence, new forms of communication and collaboration between different individual, collective and organizational actors among different types of organizations including a diversity of types of knowledge as well as organizational culture(s) have emerged. This paper first discusses current democratic education approaches by drawing on current literature on the subject and then, second, presents a case study from an emerging network of schools in Upper Austria that are in the initial stages of implementing such new approaches of democratic education into their organizations. Because they require the effective collaboration of diverse actors like administrators, teachers, students, and community partners, they can have significant impacts on school cultures. Already established international literature clearly points on the primarily positive and innovative effect that integrating new approaches of Democratic Education can have on organizational development, because these new approaches of Democratic Education can help to break down traditional barriers in and between educational organizations and the surrounding communities (Fahrenwald & Feyerer 2020). In our research, supported by a Community Foundation in Vienna, we use a mixed methods design: In addition to a document analysis, that examines the outlines of engagement projects submitted in a local newspaper’s competition in Upper Austria during the last five years, expert interviews were conducted. In this presentation we will discuss the results from the interviews carried out with school leaders and project coordinators of 6 schools (primary schools, high schools and grammar school), which agreed to work with us on implementing civic engagement education systematically as a means of school development. The overall goal of the paper is to analyze the learning experiences and the learning challenges within these new forms of partnership and collaboration between different organizations for to understand better the needs for diversity sensitive training offers for individual, collective and organizational actors.

Berkemeyer, Niels and Hanna Järvinen (2011): Lernen in Netzwerken. Journal für Schulentwicklung (3): 4-7. Brühlmann, Jürg and Hans-Günter Rolff (2015): Horizontale Schulentwicklung, Journal für Schulentwicklung (1): 4-7. Fahrenwald, Claudia und Jakob Feyerer (2020): Zivilgesellschaftliche Öffnung der Bildungsorganisation Schule. In: Andreas Schröer, Nicolas Engel, Claudia Fahrenwald, Michael Göhlich, Christian Schröder und Susanne M. Weber (Hrsg.): Organisation und Zivilgesellschaft. Beiträge der Kommission Organisationspädagogik, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, S. 65-74.