Paper short abstract:

As Kondo (2009) points out, there are few resources for “Politische Bildung” in Japan, so we started to issue teaching materials focused on the “Beutelsbach Consensus”. The authors are in the process of revising the material. We will examine what the teacher paid attention to during the trial, what did not go well, and the voice of the learners.

Paper long abstract:

In order to incorporate “Politische Bildung” into Japanese language education, there are several possible approaches, such as (1) lectures and workshops, and (2) practice in the classroom. However, as Kondo (2009) points out, there are few resources for “Politische Bildung” in Japan, so classroom practice is not easy. So we set out to issue teaching materials.

We focused on the “Beutelsbach Consensus”, which we reported in Presentation 1. We chose content that matched the interests of the students, and incorporated activities to build up a dialogue with the purpose of accepting the existence of different opinions, taking care that the activities would not be indoctrinated by the teacher but would be acquired by the learners themselves. However, the question arose as to whether we as teachers have sufficient democratic citizenship. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary for the teachers themselves to make it a teaching tool for developing democratic citizenship with their learners, as claimed in Presentation 2.

Therefore, we did not prepare a teacher's manual, but divided the activity into multiple steps, specifying the goals of each activity, and structured the dialogue in a step-by-step manner. It is expected that the materials will not indoctrinate teachers, but that teachers will acquire democratic citizenship for themselves through their own practices. The contents were chosen from familiar topics and were designed to make the reader feel that everyday life is politics. It also focused on critical thinking. In particular, lessons 1 to 4 were developed with an emphasis on "cultivating teachers' democratic citizenship" with an emphasis on the expandability of "easy to difficult".

The authors are currently in the process of revising the material to verify that it can be used to help teachers and learners acquire democratic citizenship by themselves. It means that we authors of the materials try to avoid indoctrinating others, and also that they themselves are taking the initiative in cultivating democratic citizenship with the materials.

In the presentation, we will examine what the teacher paid attention to during the trial, what did not go well, and the voice of the learners.