Abstract:

Democracy education (i.e. teaching and learning about, through and for democracy) is given a crucial role in developing youths’ democratic competences (Gerdes, 2020). A large body of research examined teaching and learning of democracy in general school education, whereas vocational schools are hardly addressed by research (Busse et al. 2022). In many European countries, vocational schools provide not only learning opportunities for trainees’ vocational education and training (VET) but also democracy education. In Germany, the educational administration recently emphasized the need of a stronger teaching and learning of democracy at vocational schools. In many German federal states, this emphasis resulted in educational tasks for vocational schools aimed at the promotion of democracy by the whole school staff (e.g., Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Lower Saxony 2021). So far, little is known about the challenges of democracy education at vocational schools. Therefore, this study investigates the following research question: What are challenges of democracy education from the perspective of the school staff at vocational schools?

The present study used individual semi-structured interviews to explore participants’ views on challenges of democracy education at vocational schools. The study was conducted in 2022 in the region of Lower-Saxony in Germany. 20 of the 130 official vocational schools in Lower-Saxony were invited to take part in the study. In total, 10 vocational schools participated. In each participating vocational school, the school principals, department head of the vocational school of the dual system (Berufsschule), team leaders of politics teachers, and politics teachers were invited to take part in the study. In total, n = 56 participants were interviewed. A qualitative content analysis was conducted with MAXQDA to compare participants’ views on the challenges of democracy education at vocational schools. A set of main categories distinguishing between challenges at the:
(1) student level,
(2) teacher level,
(3) school level, and regarding the
(4) curriculum of VET was first derived deductively from the literature to systematize participants’ views.

The deductively derived facets were than extended based on the interviews, which resulted in a final coding scheme with 4 main categories and 23 sub-categories.

The results show that democracy education at vocational schools was most often attributed with challenges at the student level. Approximately 55% of the stated challenges could be ascribed to this dimension. At the student level, the school staff most often endorsed students’ learning backgrounds and prerequisites as being a challenge for teaching and learning democracy at vocational schools. 38% of the teachers stated challenges at the curricular level of VET, primarily related to the limited time allocated for democracy education and the tendency to prioritize topics unrelated to it. 23% of the teachers connected challenges of democracy education with the teacher level, often stating the issue of democracy education being handled by teachers lacking qualification in the field. We will discuss the results of our study in the light of the role of democracy education in VET and the relevance of democracy education in the context of current global changes.

Keywords:

Democracy Education, Vocational Schools, Challenges.