Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE - Universität Bielefeld)
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Perpetuating the Failure: Economic Education and the Current Crisis
Get PDFWhile the current financial crisis had an overwhelming impact on the global economy, its effect on economics as an academic discipline has been negligible. This paper explores the relationship between the financial crisis, mainstream economic theory and the education of economists. In a nutshell it shows that (a) current economic education leaves students illiterate with respect to events like the financial crisis, (b) mainstream economic theory is unable to systemically explain the financial crisis and (c) this situation will be unaffected by the recent events. On the contrary economic education will stay pretty much the same, since it incorporates a set of ideas, perceived as influential, well-established and important by the economic community
Core Concept “Political Compass”. How Kitschelt’s Model of Liberal, Socialist, Libertarian and Conservative Orientations Can Fill the Ideology Gap in Civic Education
Get PDFInternational value surveys and misconception studies reveal the crucial role of individual value orientations for political judgment abilities. But in Civic Education, political opinions are generally merely asked for or remain superficial, non-committal statements that don’t get analyzed to foster identity development, perspective-taking and tolerance. Thus, this article discusses Kitschelt’s coordinate system of political preferences as an outstanding solution to fill the ideology gap in Civic Education and therefore to enhance political literacy. At first, I will explain and outline the landscape of the four political ideologies: market-liberalism, conservatism, democratic socialism and left-libertarianism. In addition, I will trace left-libertarianism to its merely known anarchist roots. After that, I will explain how our basic political values are shaped by economic and cultural developments and how they combine to become political ideologies, social milieus and party families. As a third point, I will outline possible applications of Kitschelt’s model for the subject of Civic Education. For that, I propose a map of fundamental controversial issues to help students to discover their own political position. Finally, I will introduce the “Found-a-Village-Project” as highly interactive and controversial scenario to foster political identity formation
Financial, Economic and Political Crises - Carrying Social Science Education on as Before?
Get PDFThis issue of the Journal of Social Science Education deals with the financial and economic crises, its causes and the consequences which could be drawn for civic and economic education. As far as economic and civic educators are expected to behave like communicators of established scientific knowledge received from economics or political science, they also are hit by the crisis of these two disciplines which is induced by their severe shortcomings in the crisis. The conventional wisdom of economics or of political science failed to provide an early warning system of potentially dangerous institutions, policies or outcomes. On the contrary, among the main causes of the financial crisis and its political and economic failures are: policy recommendations delivered by the Chicago school of economics, beliefs and decisions of the economic and political elites encouraged by mainstream economics and economic liberalism, and, last but not least, an increasing self-restraint of the state towards the market, fed by political theories based on the idea that (financial) markets should best control themselves. The financial-economic-political crisis cannot be understood without its ideological, institutional and political framework, and this framework cannot be understood without taking into account its foundations in mainstream economics and the economic mode of thinking which is also flourishing in political science. The significant shift of power in favour of the international financial industries has to be considered, too. Disentangling the intricate causes of the intertwined crises and discussing its consequences – also for education at universities – is a challenging task taken up by the authors of this and the next issue of the JSSE
A Didactic Reconstruction of the Financial and Economic Crisis
Get PDFTheoretical approaches to constructivism have put learner autonomy into the spotlight of didactic discourse. Apart from the matter of pedagogic actions on how (constructivisticly) organised education might be arranged, this paper focuses on the perspective of didactic reconstruction. Thus, an observation-based research perspective is being adopted in this paper. The epistemic beliefs that have emerged over the course of the global financial and economic depression are reconstructed. The goal of the paper is to provide an insight into these different interpretations. In order to do this, university students were surveyed regarding this topic and the results of this qualitative study on these epistemic beliefs will be represented in this article. The paper tries to give answers on how students, who have been experiencing the financial and economic depression for nearly three years now, define its causes and what subsequent actions they would recommend. The results show that the main issue is not misinterpretation of political and economic knowledge but rather incomplete constructs based on only approximate knowledge
Political Competences and Political Participation: On The Role of “Objective” Political Knowledge, Political Reasoning, and Subjective Political Competence in Early Adulthood
Get PDFThis article deals with the relation of objective political competences and the subjective assessment of one’s own political competence. The theoretical frame states that at least in early adulthood, only the subjective competence but not political knowledge is an autonomous and important determinant for (socio-)political participation, mediating the influence of objective political competences (or political knowledge, respectively). To test the role of subjective political competence and the (remaining) effect of political knowledge in early adulthood, empirical evidence using a sample of university students is presented. Cross-sectional analyses show that political knowledge has at least, if anything, an impact on voting, while fully mediated by subjective political competence relating non-electoral legal political activities. In contrast, the more profound competence of political reasoning has clear and stable positive effects on the intention to engage in non-electoral legal political actions – here subjective competence seems to be less important. Eventually, after a short excursus on school participation the findings are summarised and discussed by relating them back to framework and hypothesis. A concluding section proposes two opposing developmental-psychological considerations about the findings, raising further questions and giving an outlook into future research
Qualitative Research – Voices from Social Science Classrooms
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From Texts to Pictures in Teaching Civics. Participant Observation in Mark’s Classroom
Get PDFWe are now living in a “new media age”, with a dramatic shift from the linguistic to the visual, from books and book pages to screens and windows (Kress, 2003). This article offsets out to explore what happens to educational activities in schools when electronic media and pictures replace written texts. The article draws on interviews and classroom observations of a particular Swedish vocational upper secondary programme, where the social studies teacher observes that students are finding it increasingly difficult to benefit from written texts. Theoretically, the study draws on Meyrowitz (1985/1986) theories concerning the relationship among media, situations and behaviour and the effect of a shift from “print situations” to “electronic situations” on a broad range of social role and Bernstein’s (1996/2000) notions of ‘recontextualisation’, ‘framing’ and ‘classification’. The study shows that classroom relations are changing; hierarchies between students and teachers are being broken down, and classification of subjects is affected in the sense that the students’ own interpretations and references are beginning to govern teaching when pictures and electronic media enter the educational discourse
Parteipolitik in der Schule? (1964)
No full textWird die Aktualisierung des Unterrichts den Lehrer nicht in Versuchung führen, seine parteipolitischen Ansichten den Schülern zu suggerieren? Die eben besprochene Karikatur war in dieser Hinsicht durchaus unproblematisch und kein heißes Eisen im Sinne der Parteipolitik. Welcher Partei der Lehrer auch an-[87/88]gehören oder welcher er auch nahestehen mag, auf die Deutung und Auswertung der Karikatur dürfte das keinen Einfluß haben
The Rationale of Crisis Management – On the Handling of Coincidence in Economic Situation
Get PDFThe subject of this essay is too complex a problem as to cover all details in depth and, thus, draws its attention only to core aspects of the handling of coincidence leaving out sophisticated studies and analytic findings as well as detailed reference to economic literature though there is not very much. On the other hand, for a lot of actual as well as general reasons, the subject is too important a matter as to ignore the serious methodological problems of crisis management, which are rooted in some politically still active bias hidden in orthodox neo-classical economics (Stiglitz 2010). If crisis management continues to follow traditional rationales, it will fail realizing the increasing dynamic of crises within the globalising economies of the world. No existing economy can be considered as an isolated system of its own embedded in a stable composition of societal surroundings. Obviously, many a critical situation has its origin in the sphere of civilization, of political discrepancies, and of administrative inflexibilities. On the other hand, any grave amplitude of markets would touch the entire social surrounding. The belief in the markets’ strength of self-regulation is a dangerous construction of orthodox economics (Bendixen 2009b, 2010). The view on crises suggested here is that of a holistic approach to understand a critical situation. Any interpretation of a situation includes empirical dates and figures based on analytic research, but solving a problem is not an act of logical derivation from findings, as if a solution can be excavated in the mud of reality by empirical studies only. Empirical figures report events of the past; the future does not reveal any empiricism. This would be a contradiction in itself. The end of a crisis as well as the search for solutions to fight the problems revealed is unavoidably a view into the future. Therefore, the rationale of crisis management cannot be made of pure empiricism but should include a far reaching vision of the future emerging from holistic understanding of the situation as a whole
Financial Education
Get PDFNew, more or better financial education and financial literacy programmes should lead to improved financial capability, knowledge and outcomes. Yet we do not even know which terminology is most suitable for those projects who all intend to give an answer to a question which is less than clear. What is meant by the term “financial education”? Why did the “demand” for financial education suddenly increase? Have the numerous tasks which consumers in a modern society have to fulfill created this new field for financial education? Are their specific needs of financial markets which need adapted consumers as competent players? Or has the general level of education fallen? Would more ignorance on financial products perhaps increase the likelihood of these markets to care more about consumers? Do we truly need financial education at all and if so, as this article argues, what kind of financial education would respond to it? Based on five years of empirical research, on existing papers and curriculars for financial education and another five years of our own experiences with practical financial education in schools and with clients of debt advice agencies we would like to promote financial education as a form of consumer protection where consumers are seen collectively as the true masters of the economy