Abstract:

In view of the social and socio-political changes of our time, children and adolescents are faced with new demands regarding their abilities for self-direction and independent action, which is why the early learning of pre-political knowledge is necessary (Wittig 2016). Daycare centers and elementary schools are of particular importance here, because they are not only the first non-family educational instance for children, but also the first non-family instance of democratic experience (vbw 2020, BMFSFJ 2020). Accordingly, the curricula of the federal states stipulate a democratic attitude as a binding educational goal (vbw 2020). As research shows, 6-year-olds already have a certain amount of knowledge. Even children as young as 5 have varying levels of political literacy (Goll 2020).

All knowledge is acquired through the media (Luhmann 1996) since media function as "worldview generators" (Rath 2000). Therefore, media literacy is a prerequisite for political education (Oberle 2017). However, despite the fact that binding educational goals and can also be found in early education programs, there is a lack of empirical data on this (Nentwig-Gesemann & Maywald 2020), which is partly due to the fact that research with young children involves various hurdles. Childhood research must adapt to and be oriented toward the age-appropriate abilities of children. These include expressive ability, structural ability, and reflective ability (Bertschi & Hedderich 2021). Accordingly, research projects in early education must always be particularly oriented toward child participants (Hartnack 2009). They must not overtax children (Petermann & Windmann 1993) and at the same time they must take them seriously as experts of their world (Hunger 2019). Therefore, qualitative methods, such as those used in media-creative research, are employed. For example, puppet interviews (Weise 2016), which are intended to reduce cognitive barriers (Berton & Schäfer 2005), are used with 3- to 6-year-olds.

However, puppet interviews can show several deficiencies. For example, there are children who cannot establish a connection with the puppet and would rather talk to the person behind it. Furthermore, they also show shortcomings on the structural level, as children have to reflect less on their answers. Mapping methods, on the other hand, are used to visualize and organize knowledge (Novak & Cañas, 2006). Thereby concept maps can activate and challenge participants’ reflective capacity.

In the context of the interdisciplinary project PoJoMeC at TU Dortmund University (Tkotzyk & Marci-Boehncke 2021), this paper investigates whether the (picture) concept map strategy (Novak 1990) is suitable for research on policy awareness involving children in daycare centers. To this end, we review previous research on the method in early childhood and present the preparations as well as first pre-tests with this instrument. In doing so, we examine the extent to which the different levels of political literacy can be successfully addressed by this research method. Finally, we discuss a possible suitability of this method in didactic use for the promotion of children's political reflection.

Keywords:

Early childhood research, picture concept maps, research methods, political literacy, media literacy.