JEN_T_03 The Development and Introduction of a Civic Education Master’s Degree Programme

Objective / Research Questions

The creation and establishment of a Civic Education master’s degree course has been planned in cooperation with Prof. Nicole Harth. This programme targets individuals who have completed a bachelor’s degree in social or behavioural sciences. Students will become qualified to support people of various ages in understanding and implementing fundamental democratic principles, and they will further expand their expertise in democracy. Students will learn how to interpret social scientific analyses and to apply them in practice. They will also gain the communicative skills needed to engage in exchanges with key actors from various academic, non-academic, and political areas. The core qualifications imparted by the programme include an ability to think in an interdisciplinary manner and the ability to shift one’s perspective.

This degree programme has been developed in accordance with the German Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (HQR 2017). Some of the most common career areas graduates can pursue include the management of social institutions, non-governmental organizations, volunteer organizations, cultural education centres and memorial sites, integration work, policy advice, partnerships for democracy, school and youth social work, welfare associations, and work involving diversity and extremism prevention. In their roles as professionals, graduates will serve as multipliers in various areas of society by working to sustainably promote democratic values through education and information transfer as well as by addressing questions related to social cohesion. The programme will also identify and offer individual modules for specific target groups (e.g. cooperation with the Policy Academy in Thüringen). A cornerstone of the programme revolves around two-way exchanges between theory and practice – based on the mutual interrelation between action and thought aimed at educating practitioners who go on to actively have an impact on society. The curriculum will draw on research conducted at RISC as well as on experiences gathered from the field. The programme specifically seeks to establish partnerships with local actors and foundations in order to provide students with a practically oriented, needs-based course of study as well as with insights and contacts that directly relate to their subsequent professional careers. As one of the main elements of this programme, students will acquire transfer competence: the knowledge and skills to promote democratic expertise. The programme will be able to draw from the expansive networks established by the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences (EAH) and the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ), two institutions committed to pursuing transfer between theory and practice. The master’s degree programme is being offered in partnership with the EAH in Jena, providing students an opportunity to directly apply what they learn during their studies. The programme closely cooperates with the various research centres to maintain an interlinkage between theory, curriculum, and practice. The modules that have been developed can be offered as web-based seminars via a learning platform or as supplementary qualifications for young scholars within RISC.

Thematic relation to social cohesion

Social cohesion is a complex issue that revolves around by the key question of how much cohesion does a society require (see Wilkinson/Pickett 2007). A democratically driven culture of debate is indispensable for ensuring the ongoing negotiation of values and norms in an ever-changing society. Graduates of the Civic Education programme will be well equipped to recognize the possibility of conflict, offer effective solutions, and incorporate stakeholders in decision-making processes. At the same time, the programme will develop their ability to assess the resources and latitude for negotiation needed for democratization. They will learn to empower individuals with and without past experiences of social/cultural exclusion (Maaitah et al. 2018). Their task is to serve as role models and to promote all facets of democracy in the current age of globalization and digitalization as well as to create spaces that permit productive exchange and dispute. One of the focus areas involves the sharing of practical skills for conducting work in the third sector, which is gaining relevance in terms of social cohesion and as a field of employment. The curriculum for this study course draws directly from ideas generated by research about social cohesion at RISC, which are incorporated using adequate theoretical concepts. Moreover, the programme’s key issue areas and methods will be identified in the course of its development. Our goal is for this master’s degree programme to become an innovative beacon for cooperation and transfer work between professional education, civil society, and basic research.

Tentative curriculum: Interdisciplinary theories/knowledge of group processes (e.g. diversity, discrimination, exclusion, and radicalization); political engagement and policy advice; pedagogical concepts for political education; handling social media and its impacts; and research methods for law and the social sciences. Sociology, law, cultural studies, and political science modules will be included to supplement the programme’s sociopsychological perspectives. The research topics addressed by RISC will also be specifically addressed and integrated into the curriculum. Students will gain the skills necessary to constructively address and communicate practical issues regarding democracy, civil society, and social cohesion in the twenty-first century. They will be able to critically analyse research findings and effectively see to their practical and political implementation.

Fichtner-Rosada, Sabine 2018: Transferdidaktik in Lehre & Prüfung – Konzept und Anwendungen im Hochschulbereich, in: KCD Schriftenreihe, Band 2, Essen.

Maaitah, Wala; Harth, Nicole S.; Kessler, Thomas 2018: Wie Wasser und Öl, wir mischen uns nicht: Eine Sozialpsychologische Analyse Sozialer Diskriminierung anhand Aussagen geflüchteter Menschen in Deutschland, in: Rohmann, Anette; Stürmer, Stefan (Hrsg.): Die Flüchtlingsdebatte in Deutschland – Sozialpsychologische Perspektiven, Berlin.

Wilkinson, Richard G.; Pickett, Kate E. 2007: The problems of relative deprivation: why some societies do better than others, in: Social Science Medicine 65:9, 1965-1978.