Gesellschaftliche Transformation und Politische Bildung

Conference Report
„Gesellschaftliche Transformation und Politische Bildung“
by Dr. Oliver Emde

On March 4–5, 2022, more than 80 participants from universities, schools, and civil society gathered at the online conference “Gesellschaftliche Transformation und Politische Bildungto discuss current crisis-driven challenges and their resulting implications for formal and non-formal political education. In terms of content, the more than 16 presentations at the event—organized by the Chair of Political Didactics and Political Education at the University of Hildesheim (Dr. Oliver Emde) and the GPJE’s Young Researchers Coordination (Felix Prehm), addressed topics such as transformative education, sustainable development, socio-ecological transformation, imperial lifestyles, and political education in the Anthropocene, and also provided insights into other current research projects

In at least four respects, it became clear at the conference that political education and social transformation(s) are closely intertwined and exist in various relationships with one another:

1. Political Education on Transformation

Political education must make processes of social transformation the focus of its content! Debates on transformation triggered by crises offer unique learning opportunities when they become topics of discussion in educational settings: The usual course of events is disrupted, notions of normality are shaken, and perspectives open up to alternatives. Social conditions lose their taken-for-granted nature and become visible and repoliticized as products of human action and human interests. 

Current developments surrounding Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine also underscore the need to make crisis-driven transformation (keyword: “turning point”) a central theme: Political education must connect with everyday experiences, with feelings of fear and powerlessness, offer safe spaces for dialogue, break down the complexity of issues, foster critical judgment, and create encouraging learning environments. 

2. Political Education in Transformation

Political education in transformation critically examines the unquestioned assumptions of political education and focuses on its own entanglement with existing social conditions and their reproduction. Education can contribute to social change and promote democratization and equality—but it can just as easily legitimize the status quo and reinforce power structures.

Against this backdrop, the task of political education in transformation is to make visible and utilize political dissent regarding the future of society as a constructive self-doubt within the discipline itself. 

3. Political Education for Transformation

In the context of transformation, civic education is invoked by various actors and utilized for a wide range of purposes. This occurs, for example, in the context of the ecological crisis, as seen in the 2011 report by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU)—here, transformative education is assigned the function of imparting knowledge in order to “provide the necessary direction for individual action.”

Such tendencies are also prominent in the approach of “Education for Sustainable Development”—the “for” makes this clear—or in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Here, not only is a separate SDG dedicated to the call for “quality education,” but education is also conceived as a cross-cutting task to promote and achieve the other SDGs.

Political education is placed here in the service of social change and at the same time runs the risk of being reduced to the function of knowledge transfer. When ready-made answers are presented as unambiguous, inevitable, and supposedly politically neutral, political education is instrumentalized as a means of legitimization—and ultimately also depoliticized.

4. Political Education as Transformation

A third perspective emphasizes the goal of empowering learners to discover and seize opportunities for participation and to actively engage in processes of social transformation. Civic education as transformation also encompasses critical reflection and debate regarding individual and societal ideals, norms, and values. What does transformation mean in specific cultural contexts? What does a global and just society look like within planetary boundaries? What goals do education stakeholders pursue in this context, and what defines the quality of the specific learning experience?

If learners are to be taken seriously as responsible individuals and critical thinking is to be cultivated, this must be accompanied by a fundamentally open orientation toward transformation, and political education must be understood as a democratic quest.