Toward a decolonial shift in citizenship education: Empirical insights into German classrooms

Abstract

Highlights:

– Empirical insights into students’ ideas on globalisation in Germany.

– Colonial and decolonial ideas in their ambivalences as the starting point for decolonial education processes.

– (De-)coloniality is not only about the past but also about the present and the future.

– (De-)coloniality is already in the classrooms but is rarely conceptualised in educational processes.

Purpose: This paper highlights some insights into the results of the study on decolonial citizenship education (Kleinschmidt, 2021) to contribute to the decolonisation of citizenship education in Germany.

Design/methodology/approach: The research is built on a sample of 44 interviews with students from the 9th grade in German schools, Hauptschule and Gymnasium. The interviews are interpreted using qualitative content analysis.

Findings: In the students’ concepts of globalisation, migration, and culture, several different and entangled colonial and decolonial patterns were found.

Research limitations/implications: The study is a solid starting point for discussions of citizenship education and provides fruitful insights. Nonetheless, at least in Germany, the research on this topic is at a very early stage.

Practical implications: The findings are a starting point for discussing decolonial approaches to citizenship education, aiming for both a radical re-invention of the concept of the disciplinary field of citizenship education and contributing to the conceptualisation of citizenship educational practices advocating for a more just and less colonial world.