Association for Civic Education Didactics and Civic Youth and Adult Education (GPJE) - Early Career Researcher Conference

The intensification of multiple crises threatening established democratic institutions has led to increased academic and political attention on democratic citizenship education. While public programs often aim to promote democratic attitudes, primarily among young people, academic discourses encompass different perspectives from a growing variety of educational disciplines and their contributions to educating democratic citizens. The debates surrounding education for democratic citizenship therefore encompass different viewpoints on the content, objectives, needs, opportunities, and obstacles of educational processes against the backdrop of current crises. The implementation of socio-ecological transformation, the fight against religious fundamentalism and political extremism, the reduction of group-focused enmity, the fight against political disinformation, and motivating citizens, especially young citizens, to (politically) participate in society – these and other issues are described as reasons for more or better democratic citizenship education. However, both the categorization of these developments – as challenges, crises, or apocalypses – and the content of the educational processes required to overcome them remain disputed.

In this context, this conference aims to combine different perspectives on the challenges facing democratic societies and the possibilities of democratic citizenship education to address them.