Political didactics and political education in Germany
In: Regional contexts and citizenship education in Asia and Europe., S. 53-65
The chapter describe the development of political education and political didactics in schools, showing it to be a process of increasing professionalization having grown resulted from various political influences. The beginnings of political didactics and the school subject of politics are presented. This is followed by a description of the phase of professionalization of political didactics and teacher education through the establishment of chairs of political didactics at institutes of political science. The next section traces the politicization and depoliticization of didactics and of the teaching of politics. Then the didactic moves to a variety of new normative questions. The current situation is characterized by a new phenomenon - the start of a theoretical development. The different theoretical considerations on the subject-specific competences of teachers and pupils are discussed. In addition, the first systematically collected empirical findings on theoretically postulated dimensions of competence are presented.