Learning from and with each other.
Competence teams from extracurricular youth education and social pedagogy to strengthen political education
Structures for cooperation are being created as part of the pilot project: At eight locations in Germany, actors from extracurricular political youth education work together with actors from open youth work. The cooperation is scientifically monitored. Both in the professional exchanges with the experts involved in the project and in the accompanying research, findings are reconstructed with regard to the professionalism and educational concepts of the various actors, challenges and conditions for success of the cooperation are worked out and the associated opportunities for political education processes are discussed.
Publication at the end of the project
"Learning from and with each other"
In the project "Learning from and with each other. Competence teams from extracurricular youth education and social pedagogy to strengthen political education" focused on reconstructing the professional and educational understandings of youth work professionals and reflecting on the potentials and challenges of political education processes in various fields of youth work. To this end, a model and research project took place from October 2021 to December 2024, in which cooperation between actors from various fields of youth work was initiated and accompanied by research. The project was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
The findings of the accompanying scientific research show that political education in youth work is regarded as a low-threshold, subject-oriented and action-related practice across all fields of activity. The structural challenges vary: While a lack of time and resources is cited as a challenge in open youth work, the project logic in extracurricular youth education makes it difficult to implement the demands of participant-oriented and longer-term educational work. In addition, it was possible to reconstruct the narrative of a different political education, which is described as content-oriented and high-threshold and is used as an explanatory figure to differentiate one's own political education practice. Overall, the results reveal a differentiated picture of civic education that prioritizes subject- and lifeworld-oriented approaches, while there are field-specific differences in practices and formats.
Findings from the project context and the accompanying research have now been published under the title "Political education in fields of action of youth work" and can be downloaded here as a PDF
here.
Initial situation and research interest
According to the social law mandate from §11 SGB VIII, political education for youth work is described both as a fundamental task and as a specific field of action. The current Federal Youth Report describes various forms of spaces for political youth education in the fields of action of child and youth work, including
- spaces of child and youth work for conceptually planned political education for children and young people as "above all those offers that are dedicated to the political education of young people as central content and largely exclusively related to it"
- open spaces as opportunity structures for democratic education with young people, for example for "open child and youth work and outreach youth (social) work" (BMFSFJ 2020, p. 329)
...and notes that there is, however, hardly any exchange about the respective practices, concepts and professional standards of political education work: "Each field of action cultivates its own professional discourse. There are few intersections between the discourses, while at the same time there is a high degree of mutual connectivity between educational practices. In order to gain an understanding of the specific conditions and concepts [...] and thus further develop civic education in all fields of work, mutual knowledge of and reference to the various specialist debates is urgently recommended." (ibid., p. 363).
This is where the pilot project "Learning from and with each other" comes in, in order to take a closer look at professional self-images, understandings of political education and the potentials and challenges of cross-field cooperation.
Project: Learning from and with each other
For the model project, tandems consisting of one actor from extracurricular political education work and one actor from open youth work were each accompanied in research during the project period. The tandems are heterogeneous in terms of their structure: they either continue long-standing cooperative relationships or have been initiated as new collaborations. They exist as networks for the promotion of exchange and reflection between the cooperating professionals or as decidedly event-related cooperation for the conception, implementation and evaluation of a joint project. The project also provides for cross-tandem exchange formats in the form of specialist exchanges and network meetings, which enable a reciprocal exchange on learning and experience processes in the project as well as professional understanding.
In the participatory accompanying research, guideline-based interviews were used to focus on the topics of professional and educational understanding, potentials and challenges of cooperation and the perception of specific calls to one's own (educational) practice. The underlying research interest is formulated in five guiding questions:
- How/what constitutes one's own understanding of the profession?
- What understandings of civic education are formulated?
- When does an experience become an educational occasion in youth work?
- How does cooperation in the project influence pedagogical practice?
- What requirements of actors outside the profession are perceived?
Publications from the project
Sämann, Jana and Wohnig, Alexander (eds.) (2024): Political education in fields of action of youth work. Results of the project "Learning from and with each other. Competence teams from extracurricular youth education and social pedagogy to strengthen political education" (VoMiLe). Siegen.
Available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/10620.
Sämann, Jana (2025): "...that this is already political education". Professional self-perceptions of civic education in youth work fields of action. In: journal for political education, 1/2025, pp. 30-35
Chávez, Michelle (2023): Empowerment of girls* through political education. How cooperation between youth education centers and youth work contributes to empowerment. In: journal for political education, issue 3/2023
Richter, Elisabeth and Sämann, Jana (2022): Potentials of participatory research for knowledge transfer: reflections on co-determination and education based on the research project "Learning from and with each other".
In: deutsche jugend 10/2022, Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, pp. 423-439
Sämann, Jana and Wohnig, Alexander (2022): Political education and democracy education in (extracurricular political) youth (education) work.
In: Forum für Kinder- und Jugendarbeit, issue 1/2022, p. 4-9
Final conference on June 3 and 4
Political education in cooperative youth work groups.
In the pilot project "Learning from and with each other", tandems of professionals from extracurricular political education work and open child and youth work cooperated for two years in various formats and were accompanied by research during this project period. The central research interests were the specific professional and educational understandings of the participating professionals, reflections on the potentials and challenges of cooperation and the perception of specific calls for their own (educational) practice. As part of the final conference of the pilot project, both the findings from the project and impressions from the cooperation will be presented. With a focus on thematic and structural priorities that have emerged over the two years, the topics of diversity and discrimination sensitivity in socio-pedagogical (educational) work, the conditions of networking in rural areas and challenges posed by funding and structural conditions will be explored in greater depth. In order to place the results in a broader context, participants from other (research) projects in the context of political education in youth work fields of action are also invited so that different impressions can be discussed in context. We cordially invite you to join us! The conference will take place on June 3 and 4, 2024 at the House of Democracy and Human Rights in Berlin. Participation is free of charge. To register, please use https://eveeno.com/vomile
Program
Monday, June 3
13:30 Arrival (with coffee and cake)
2 p.m. Welcome | Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alexander Wohnig and Jana Sämann (University of Siegen)
14:15 Lecture and discussion: 'Learning from and with each other' - Key findings from the project's accompanying research | Jana Sämann (University of Siegen)
15:30 hrs Coffee break
4 p.m. Presentation of the Tandem project work as a tour in the foyer
4.30 pm Lecture and discussion: Quite complex - on dealing with heterogeneity and intersectionality in political education and open child and youth work | Katharina Debus
- Youth work target groups are heterogeneous. Various inequalities such as gender relations, racism, classism, anti-Semitism, ableism, etc. often overlap in complex ways - this can be summarized with the term intersectionality. The lecture will first provide a practical conceptual basis for discrimination and intersectionality, including one or two case studies from youth and educational work. Building on this, the speaker will deal with the question of how intersectionality can be taken into account in youth work practice - for example, how occasions for discussion on these topics can be given and taken up, or how intersectionality can be taken into account in project or seminar concepts on discrimination issues, even if it is not always possible to take all inequalities into account equally. In addition, the speaker will provide tips on how professionals can deal with the diversity of their target groups' life situations in practice. Katharina Debus began in the early 2000s with political youth education, including on gender relations and racism, taking class relations into account. Since the late 2000s, her focus has been on specialist training, specialist consulting, publications and occasionally research and evaluation on gender relations, gender and sexual diversity, sexual education, discrimination, intersectionality and sometimes racism and the associated pedagogical approaches. Among other things, her work focuses on the question of how learning processes on these topics can be designed in such a way that the participants' ability to act against discrimination is strengthened and the addressees are addressed as potential allies for a fairer world. After working for Dissens - Institute for Education and Research for many years, she now works as a freelancer, lives in Berlin and works nationwide and beyond. www.katharina-debus.de.
17:30 Summary from 18:00 Optional evening program
Tuesday, June 4
09:00 Arrival (with coffee and tea)
09:15 a.m. Kick-off
09:30 Lecture and discussion: Youth work, democracy and political education | Stefan Schäfer (KatHo Cologne)
- Democracy is not in good shape at the moment. Right-wing extremist attacks, hatred and hate speech in social media, the success of right-wing populist parties in Germany, Europe and the world, the open questioning of democratic values that are thought to be immovable, growing mistrust, even among many young people, in the ability of politics to solve problems that are seen as relevant - the list of things that can be used to describe a "crisis of democracy" is long and seems to be getting longer every day. While open child and youth work and extracurricular education - not least due to the dominance of school in the public education discourse - have so far been forced to constantly make themselves visible as places of participation and political education and to fight for recognition, the wind seems to be changing with the "crisis of democracy". Youth work is being discovered as a means of democracy education and democracy promotion and can now - in the tailwind of the current democracy movement - prove its contribution to the political education of young people and thus also to strengthening democracy. But what challenges does this pose in practice? Is the hope projected onto youth work that it can save democracy not also an overload and overburdening of practice? What does it actually take to turn open child and youth work into a place of political education? The lecture outlines current developments in politics and professional debate and focuses on self-demands, expectations of practice and funding policy trends as well as the possibilities and limits of political education in and through youth work.
10.30 a.m. Coffee break
11 a.m. Parallel panels:
1. cooperation between political educators & OKJA in rural areas | Mirko Wolff, Miteinander - Netzwerk für Demokratie und Weltoffenheit in Sachsen-Anhalt e.V.
- There are specific peculiarities that are characteristic of rural areas, which in turn create concrete needs and challenges in political education and youth work. Using the example of an East German rural area in the north of Saxony-Anhalt, experiences from an ongoing cooperation between political educators and OKJA actors will be presented and discussed.
2 Sensitivity to diversity and discrimination in political youth education and group offers of OKJA | Mosaik Deutschland e.V., IB Jugendtreff Kirchheim/Queer Youth and Bildungsstätte Alte Schule Anspach basa e.V.
- Sensitivity to diversity and an intersectional approach with regard to possible experiences of discrimination are prerequisites in political education and in group offers of open youth work for participants to experience themselves as being considered and accepted and to be able to actively shape processes. In this working group, concrete examples from educational practice will be presented and the implementation of corresponding concepts will be discussed.
3. funding policy and working (conditions) in political education | Georg Gläser, research associate at the Department of Political Science, Education Policy and Political Education at the University of Cologne
- Civic education takes place in many different contexts. The political education landscape differs in terms of spaces, participants, historical genesis, degree of institutionalization and, last but not least, working conditions. In the workshop, we first want to discuss the various structural conditions, positive experiences and challenges of political education as work and, in a second step, develop counter-strategies for any problems.
1 p.m. Lunch break (with catering in the foyer)
2 p.m. Symposium: Current research on civic education in youth work fields of action | moderated by Jennifer Hübner (ASH Berlin) with speakers from the research projects:
Yasmine Chehata (TH Köln) "momente - Political education and open child and youth work in NRW"
- The practical research project momente is about analyzing the political moment in the everyday work of open child and youth work. The guiding question for the research project is: What are moments of the political in the everyday life of open child and youth work? On the basis of ethnographic observations, we will then discuss together with partners from the field of OYC how these moments could be perceived in OYC and anchored as political education work.
- Yasmine Chehata has been teaching and researching at the Schools of Applied Social Sciences at TH Köln since 2008. Previously, she worked as a social worker with a focus on low-threshold social work. Her topics are social work, (European) youth policy and youth work, criticism of racism, empowerment and power sharing as well as political education.
Dr. Helle Becker (Transfer für Bildung e.V.) and Luisa Klöckner (TH Köln), "OPEN - Offene Jugendarbeit und politische Bildung gemeinsam engagiert " and "Feldanalyse Kinder- und Jugendarbeit"
- The two-year research project "Feldanalyse Kinder- und Jugendarbeit. Forms of political education" (2022-2024) is funded by the German Youth Brand Foundation and carried out by the research focus on non-formal education at the TH Köln in cooperation with Transfer für Bildung e.V. The project explores new cooperative forms of political education that can arise through cooperation between open child and youth work and political youth education. To this end, the perspectives of the professionals involved and the young users of the services are collected in interviews and group discussions and then evaluated using content analysis. https://transfer-politische-bildung.de/transferstelle/feldanalyse-kja/ The project "OPEN - Offene Jugendarbeit und politische Bildung gemeinsam engagiert", which was carried out by the Transferstelle politische Bildung at Transfer für Bildung e.V. and funded by Stiftung Mercator, served as a field. The project tested long-term structural partnerships between open child and youth work institutions and political youth education providers. The aim was to find new forms of political education for young people who previously had few or no opportunities for political education. https://transfer-politische-bildung.de/transferstelle/open/
- Dr. Helle Becker is Managing Director of Transfer für Bildung e.V. and Head of Expertise & Communication for Education - two organizations that specialize in applied research and its utilization for the practice of political, cultural and international education. She works as a researcher, in further education and as a lecturer at the University of Hildesheim and the TH Cologne.
- Luisa Klöckner (M.A.) works at the research focus Nonformal Education at the Institute for Childhood, Youth, Family and Adults at the TH Cologne. Her research, lectures and publications focus on: Non-formal political education, political action in social work, political theory of social work, child and youth work. She is doing her doctorate on the topic 'The Political in Social Work' at the Doctoral Center for Social Work at HAW Hessen.
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Richter, "DemoPark - Democratic Participation of Young People in Rural Areas" (MSH Medical School Hamburg)
- The research project "Democratic participation of young people in rural areas. Potentials and perspectives of volunteering in youth associations and municipalities" (DemoParK) investigated opportunities and potentials of democratic participation and volunteering of young people in rural areas from 2021 to 2024. The role of youth associations and municipal youth policy in both rural and peri-urban regions as well as in an East-West comparison are addressed. A special focus is placed on the participatory research method of action break research, which makes it possible not only to collect data but also to ensure the active participation of young people in the research process. The aim is not only to generate findings, but also to provide concrete impetus for the development of democratic structures for local child and youth participation in rural regions.
- Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Richter is Professor of Intercultural Social Work at MSH Medical School Hamburg. Her research focuses on democracy education, including in the fields of youth work, day-care centers and municipal child and youth participation. She also deals specifically with processes of participatory research.
15:45 Summary
4 p.m. End
Short contribution at the final conference of the field analysis of child and youth work' in Cologne
Alexander Wohnig and Jana Sämann were in Cologne on May 23, 2024 for the final conference of the project "Feldanalyse Kinder- und Jugendarbeit" of the TH Köln and Transferstelle politische Bildung e.V.
and gave a brief insight into the VoMiLe research project results. The contribution focuses on attribution narratives on open youth work and political education and provides insights into understandings of political education in the fields of action and can be found here.
