This symposium will focus on education for democracy in the age of global digitality. On an empirical basis, we will ask how democracy and education for democracy are understood by teachers and learners, what meaning they attribute to it and what this means for teaching and learning in schools in their orientation towards the future. Particular attention will be paid to revealing the contextuality of these understandings and, by looking at the different perspectives together, to uncovering a common core for the further development of democracy-promoting education under conditions of glocality (Robertson, 1995). A unifying element for all contributions is their localisation within the horizon of global digitality (Grünberger, 2022; Stalder, 2017). This provides a common reference point for reflecting on the empirical findings, namely on the potential of digitality for the democracy-promoting education. With its various contributions, the symposium aims to provide suggestions for the democracy-promoting education in the context of digitality, which can develop relevance for different contexts.

The often described crisis of democracy (Abramowitz, 2018) is a global challenge for school education. Crisis and threat have different contextual manifestations: Some are political developments such as the rise of populist parties or the observed increase in autocratic forms of governance, others are socio-cultural developments such as the dominance of an isolated individualism in the age of performance (Ball, 2003). All of these developments are being significantly accelerated by the shift to the digital realm, undermining democratic consensus. These challenges to deliberative democracy are faced with problems that, because of their complexity, require the participation of as many people as possible in order to address them in a way that is based on justice (Culp, 2019), in a society that is as stable as possible. This applies to the climate crisis as well as the equitable distribution of resources and goods, issues of intergenerational sustainability, and peacekeeping and conflict mitigation. Democratic consultation and decision-making processes are needed. Democratic education will not be able to solve the (global) social problems per se, but as a stimulus for the development of democratic skills, it is an indispensable prerequisite for their possibility (Honneth, 2015).

The symposium will explore the possibilities of promoting democratic education in schools in different contexts and from different perspectives. This plurality is essential for two reasons: First, comparative reflections allow the identification of a core that can be more clearly summarised due to its emerging variability. This makes it possible to answer the question of how to conceptualise a context-independent education that promotes democracy. Secondly, all contexts are characterised by common conditions such as globality and digitality and by the same abstract challenges (global justice, inclusion), which in turn requires a high degree of abstraction (Scheunpflug, 2019; Scheunpflug & Schröck, 2000, 2002). The specific design of educational processes that promote democracy will therefore have similarities. According to our common hypothesis, democracy education can be better understood if a deeper understanding of the relationship between context-specific (e.g. the specific political system or the specific demographic situation) and context-independent aspects (digitality, peacekeeping) can be achieved. In this respect, the symposium can also be seen as an intervention against nationally reduced concepts and curricula of democracy-promoting education in the globalised (world) society.

The symposium will present studies from different contexts (Tanzania, Cameroon, Nigeria, Germany, Ghana). In a short introduction, the connection between digitality and globality as well as teaching and learning will be outlined, it will be explained in terms of epistemic challenges. This introduction provides the framework for the empirical analysis of issues of democracy education in migration societies and in societies with precarious democratic development.

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