Global education and the cooperation of NGOs and schools : A German case study

In recent years, there has been growing pressure but also an increase of possibilities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to cooperate with schools in the field of global education. However, especially in cases of more continuous forms of cooperation, difficulties in process management are noted and the intended cooperation impacts often seem to lag far behind expectations. This paper uses an empirical case study that evaluated the effects of a threeand-a-half-year NGO–school cooperation on the school-internal implementation of global education to give explanations for the occurrence of such difficulties and suggest ways to support the implementation of global education via NGO–school cooperation. Against this background, the role(s) of NGOs as stakeholders for global education in the school sector will be explored.


Introduction
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important stakeholders for enhancing civic participation.Engaged in a wide range of issues concerning the local, national, or transnational public good, they aim to gain a broad basis for their concerns.This becomes even more important following the advancing impact orientation that has emerged in the field of development cooperation in the past several years (OECD, 2008) and now also affects the domestic activities of NGOs (VENRO, 2012).Thus, the pressure has increased on NGOs to show effectiveness in their educational work.As a consequence, more and more NGOs are searching for strong partners to improve their impact.
In the global education NGO sector, schools are increasingly regarded as such strong partners.The following citation from the Yearbook of Global Education, which is published biennially by VENRO, the umbrella organization for development NGOs in Germany, illustrates why this is so: 'Global learning will either succeed in our schools -or it will fail and achieve no noteworthy broad effect.… All well-meant extra-curricular projects or event offers in the field of adult education do not even approach the levels of attendance that can be obtained by school attendance, which admittedly is not entirely voluntary' (Dülge and Peters, 2010: 5; translation CB).Thus, the advantage of schools seems to be their access to the whole cohort of children and adolescents and their coercive character that appears to ensure that no one can evade global education.This is supposed to outplay non-formal projects and events.So, currently, many NGOs consider schools to be key to global education and have started to offer schools relevant cooperation projects.This trend is not only visible in Germany.It can also be observed in other countries throughout Europe (see Béneker and van der Vaart, 2008;Forghani-Arani et al., 2013).
The yearbook also mentions efficiency issues regarding the NGOs' educational work in schools: [m]any one-world lessons or school projects seem to remain without any effects: uninterested students, low support from teachers and headmasters, and in the end no noticeable change of attitude or behaviour regarding the target groups.Even committed teachers will wonder whether the effort was worth it.
Dülge and Peters, 2010: 5; translation CB The juxtaposition of these two text passages shows a friction between normative expectations on the one hand and experiences with implementation processes, i.e. their impacts on practical work, on the other hand.
There is already research that focuses on the implementation of global education as a thematic approach.Such research could illuminate this tension from the perspective of school-internal processes and the implementation of innovation in schools (see Scheunpflug and Uphues, 2013;Heinrich, 2009).However, the research only marginally takes into account that many schools implement global education in cooperation with NGOs as external partners.Hence, an empiricism-driven reflection of the characteristics of such a cooperation and -aligned with that -a reflection of the possible role(s) of NGOs for global education in schools is missing so far.This article enters the debate at this point.Against the background of German trends in global education policy, first a short overview will be given of current conceptual forms of cooperation between NGOs and schools.After that, an evaluation study will be introduced that analyses the effects of an NGO-school cooperation on the schoolinternal implementation of global education.With reference to selected results, possible reasons for the occurrence of frictions in an NGO-school cooperation will be outlined.Finally, with regard to the conditions for a successful NGO-school cooperation, the potential of NGOs as stakeholders for global education in the school sector will be discussed.

Global education policy and forms of NGO-school cooperation in Germany
Looking at the international landscape of global education, the question of how and by whom global education is introduced into the educational system varies.In Finland, for example, the implementation of global education takes place under the auspices of the National Board of Education and in this regard is top-down from inside the system (see Jääskeläinen, 2013).In Austria, the Federal Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture (BMUKK) mandated a strategy group to develop a national strategy for a coherent implementation of global education in the formal education system.In contrast, global education in Germany still lacks such a systemic anchoring.Although it has meanwhile become part of the cross-disciplinary educational objectives in at least some primary school curricula (see, e.g. the curriculum for primary education in Bavaria), global education is neither a widespread, compulsory school or teaching concept nor an obligatory topic in teacher education or further teacher training.The decision whether to integrate global education and how is discretionary and mainly depends on the teachers' individual interest.
Thus, the impetus for the systematic implementation of global education in German schools mainly comes from civil society actors outside the formal education system.They address teachers and headmasters with various (subject-specific as well as cross-curricular) proposals for global education projects and try to gain interest for implementing global education sustainably into the classrooms.
In 2007, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder (KMK) together with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) published a Cross-Curricular Framework for Global Development Education.This framework, which was advanced and updated in 2015 (Siege et al., 2015), aims to foster the implementation of global education from primary and secondary levels to vocational education.Thus, it offers NGOs and schools a guideline for compiling core curricula, designing lessons and extracurricular activities, as well as developing a school profile in the field of global education (2015: 16).The framework contains interdisciplinary as well as domainspecific approaches and follows a domain-specific competence model (Weinert, 2001;European Commission, 2005).Based on the three competency domains 'knowing' , 'assessing' , and 'acting' , this model is compatible with most subject-related competency models and thus will enable schools to implement global education on various levels of teaching work.
Although this framework was published in cooperation with the KMK, it is still not institutionalized in the school sector; so far it is just a proposal.However, this framework shows a considerable impact: by now, in 10 out of 16 federal states of Germany, a wide range of NGO initiatives have started to put The Cross-Curricular Framework for Global Development Education into practice.
These initiatives take various forms of cooperation: the spectrum ranges from students' field visits to NGOs to NGOs coordinating educational events such as projects, project days, or project weeks via the provision of learning materials, liaising with global education coordinators in schools, and the consultation and support of teachers who want to address global topics themselves (Bludau and Overwien, 2012;Krause, 2013).Additionally, due to the fact that schools are increasingly autonomous with regard to curricular decisions and school profiling, the publication of the framework also set the stage for NGOs offering subject and school development support.
As a consequence, more continuous, integrative approaches have started to supplement the traditionally rather additive, sporadic forms of cooperation, and domain-specific and organizational learning is supplementing project-oriented, interdisciplinary, and non-formal learning.
Following this development, a conceptual debate has emerged on which ways would be more effective than others to sustainably implement global education in schools.However, an empirical base for this discourse is still missing.

Pilot Schools for Global Education
Against this background, the study presented in this article aims to identify conditions for an effective implementation of global education in schools via the cooperation of NGOs (Bergmüller et al., 2014).The object of this study was the project Pilot Schools for Global Education.This project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), was led by an NGO, a small but central stakeholder of development education in Germany.From 2011 to 2014, this NGO supported one primary and three secondary schools, initially to learn about the contents and methods of global education and later to implement global education in their schools.More precisely, each school year the NGO organized about 100 educational events for students on topics such as Buen Vivir, climate change, or ecological footprint, provided teaching materials and access to coordinators, supported implementation processes with specific counselling, offered teacher training, and established networks between schools.These measures were intended to help to initiate and implement global education in the formal structure of schools (school programmes, curricula) as well as in the educational work of teachers (lessons, interdisciplinary projects, working groups etc.).
The focus of the study was to measure the effects of the project on students, teachers, and at a school level and to gain a deeper understanding of the processes underlying these effects.It analysed ( 1) what kind of inputs the schools got from the NGO and how these were adopted by the schools; (2) the ways in which cooperation with the NGO motivated the pedagogical staff to integrate global education into different subjects; (3) the extent to which global education was implemented in the school beyond the level of subjects; and ( 4) in what way the project was able to foster the students' interest in global topics as well as their competencies with regard to 'knowing' , 'assessing' , and 'acting' .The results can help identify measures for improving NGO-school cooperation.
The study followed a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative data collection.The quantitative data collection concentrated on the teachers' and students' increase of interest, their knowledge acquisition, and their respective assessment of the NGO offers.It consisted of a pre-post survey of all participating teachers (n=214) and students (n=504).The qualitative data collection included 18 interviews with teachers, head teachers, and external experts as well as a total of seven group discussions with 43 students.It focused on the cooperation processes between the schools and the NGO on the one hand and the implementation processes within the schools on the other.
Following Schwandt (2002), these processes can be understood as habitualized practices based on the incorporated experiental knowledge of the respective stakeholders that guide their activities.To gain a deeper understanding of these practices, it is necessary to get access to this incorporated experiental knowledge.Thus, the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2010) served as the methodological framework: referring to Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge (Mannheim, 1982), this approach distinguishes between reflexive, theoretical knowledge that can be explicated by the stakeholders themselves, and a pre-reflexive -or what Polanyi (1966) calls 'tacit' -knowledge that gives orientation to action but often cannot be verbalized by the stakeholders and therefore needs to be reconstructed by the researcher.The juxtaposition of these two sorts of knowledge constitutes the epistemic framework for understanding possible frictions in the cooperation of NGOs and schools.It moves beyond the literal, immanent meaning of talk about cooperation and implementation and focuses on the modus operandi of concrete cooperation and implementation practices.Bohnsack (2010: 104) describes this as a 'change from the question what social reality is in the perspective of the actors to the question how this reality is produced or accomplished in these actors' everyday practice' .This change from asking what to asking how makes it possible to understand this practice and to generate explanations that help to advance it.
The results presented in this article are predominantly derived from this qualitative data analysis.

Trade-offs in NGO-school cooperation
Referring to the above-mentioned methodological approach, data analysis revealed certain challenges in the cooperation of NGOs and schools that could be traced back to the following trade-offs: (a) the trade-off between formal and non-formal education; (b) the trade-off between knowledge and action; and (c) the trade-off between external enrichment and internal professionalization.In the following, these conflicts will be outlined in greater detail.

Cooperation between formal and non-formal education
At the beginning of, as well as during, the project, stakeholders reported several situations that indicate that NGOs and schools follow practices that can be traced back to different systemic contexts.Four examples shall be highlighted: • From the outset it became apparent that the existing learning materials of the NGO, which are quite widespread in the out-of-school and cross-curricular context of development education in Germany, were of limited compatibility with the subject-specific demands of curricula and the requirements of student learning in the different forms and school types.Thus, a lot of effort had to be expended for domain-specific adjustments.
• The teachers consistently mentioned the limited flexibility of process planning in schools.The NGO's sometimes spontaneous event offers could often be realized only with considerable school-internal effort.
• The students consistently highlighted the detailed and authentic elaboration of contents as well as the participative and engaging methodology and considered this to be a great difference between the NGO-inputs and normal schooling.They also emphasized as particularly beneficial the option to actively contribute and develop their own opinion instead of having to follow teacher requirements.At the same time, however, the students also mentioned quite rigid time restrictions and regretted not having the possibility to work more on these topics.
• Last but not least: several students showed an uncertainty about the relevance of global education topics for their continuing learning process, especially for subsequent tests, whereas others regarded global education input to be a 'timeout' from normal schooling with little to no relevance for their assessment.
Although quite divergent, all four examples reflect a trade-off between formal education in schools on the one hand and the traditionally non-formal educational work of NGOs on the other.
In the literature, formal education is characterized among others by its obligatory, highly structured nature (Gerber et al., 2001), its domain-specificity, and teacher intentionality (Malcolm et al., 2003: 314).Non-formal education 'occurs in a planned but highly adaptable manner in institutions, organizations, and situations beyond the spheres of formal … education.It shares the characteristic of being mediated with formal education, but the motivation for learning may be wholly intrinsic to the learner' (Eshach, 2007: 173).Additionally, Ward et al. (1974: 38) outline the following as an important difference between formal and non-formal education: '[t]he legitimacy of schools is based upon their role as credentialing agencies while non-formal education will derive its legitimacy only from its ability to meet real social needs' .Thus, teaching in schools underlies a rather rigid predetermination of objectives, contents, methodology, and timing (Fend, 2008;Dib, 1988) and is closely linked to students' assessment, something that determines not only the perception of teachers, but also that of students, as became apparent in the data.In contrast, NGOs act upon the assumption of a societal problem and their freedom to campaign for it.In this regard, their educational work is less heteronomous and more social as well as group-orientated.As the data analysis showed, the students regarded this to be a special and very positive characteristic of the NGO input.
Global education through the cooperation of NGOs and schools requires a collaboration of formal education and non-formal education.As the data analysis suggested, this collaboration is not easy: the explicit and implicit educational concepts and habitualized practices differ between NGOs and schools, and thus can cause certain frictions in cooperation processes.Of particular importance is the fact that sschools predominantly follow a domain-specific learning approach.As a consequence, although they touch upon the issue of global change, the curricula in most of the German federal states lack relevant topics that cover global issues in a more holistic way.In the current curricula, 'issues of world development and North-South relations are treated in isolation as additional topics that have no direct connection with other subjects.Furthermore, development is portrayed as a subject that has nothing to do with the world in which pupils live, a far-away issue for which it is difficult to arouse sympathy' (Seitz, n.d.).In contrast, due to their special mission, NGOs follow holistic approaches to learning.However, these approaches require a certain experience-based, action-oriented way of teaching that can also be seen as one of the genuine characteristics of NGOs' educational work (Eberlein, 2002;Frieters-Reermann, 2010).Such learning needs time -more time than the usual 45, 60, or 90 minutes of a lesson.So either the schools would have to provide longer time periods (which in the case of this project turned out to be difficult), or NGOs would have to adjust their didactical approaches, or both.
Research in the field of formal, non-formal, and informal learning has identified a general trend whereby formal learning is more and more interpenetrated by nonformal attributes and vice versa (Malcolm et al., 2003).Against this background, the question will be how far NGOs will have to harmonize their traditional educational approaches with the formal requirements of schools and what global education will then look like in schools.

Cooperation between knowledge and action
As outlined above, the evaluated project was set up in close connection with the Cross-Curricular Framework for Global Development Education (Siege et al., 2007).So the NGO focused on stimulating interest in global topics and on the improvement of competencies along the three aforementioned domains 'knowing' , 'assessing' , and 'acting' .A glance at the analysis of the student-related data shows that especially the cognitively connoted objectives could be met: the students' interest in the contents and methods of global education could be fostered.Even those students who did not usually participate much in the lessons were engaged.At the same time, it became obvious that the students gained new factual knowledge and were able to diversify their existing knowledge.The study also revealed that the NGO inputs gave students the opportunity to critically reflect on global problems and their own involvement with them.
However, as the following excerpt from a group discussion with students in one of the secondary schools shows, it also became obvious that teaching units that mainly focused on the transfer of knowledge remained unsatisfactory for some students: Bw ( . ) and I know ( . ) well, I simply missed the proximity to In this excerpt, the students refer to a teaching unit aiming to draw attention to the violation of the human rights of indigenous people in Latin America.The unit had not focused on preparing students for any type of action, but just wanted to inform.In any case, the excerpt shows that the students felt drawn to the topic in a way that conflicted with their experience of teaching ('like any history topic').They had explicitly expected to get motivated for some sort of action against human rights violations and were disappointed that the unit focused only on informing.
Here, another trade-off in the cooperation of NGOs and schools becomes obvious: the trade-off between focusing on knowledge and focusing on action.
In the international debate about global education, three different dimensions of objectives can be distinguished: 1. the establishment of competencies: here, the focus lies on objectives such as 'enhancing' , to process the flood of information, to analyse global processes, and to think holistically in order to 'support learners to develop globalmindedness' (Andreotti, 2011: 16;Adick, 2002;Bourn, 2008;Siege et al., 2007); 2. personality development and Bildung: here the focus lies on objectives like stirring interest in global issues, enhancing students' ability to shift perspectives or to show empathy and tolerance, and developing 'transformational identities' (Scheunpflug, 2011: 37); 3. active engagement (the readiness to act): here the focus lies on objectives like building (topic connoted) solidarity, enhancing communication and conflict management, and motivating students to participate as active global citizens in the local and global contexts (VENRO, 2008;BMZ, 2008).
As they act on a societal mandate, NGOs in the field of development education position themselves as stakeholders for 'empowerment' (Dieckmann and Schreiber, 1996: 36).The educational focus lies on the connection of global learning with a 'partisanship for the sufferers in the globalization process' (VENRO, 2008: 11).As a consequence, the educational work of NGOs aims to motivate people and enable them to actively help shape globalization in a fair-minded way.Therefore, developmentrelated learning in NGOs is closely linked with a change of consciousness and active engagement.
In contrast, educational work in schools in this field is primarily knowledge-based, focusing on the understanding of globalization processes and impacts.So, the focus on action and engagement recedes behind the establishment of competencies and Bildung.However, data analysis shows that global education topics are not neutral teaching contents.The NGO input stimulated the students' feelings: they were stirring, unsettling, upsetting -and motivated students to act.This provides evidence of a clear sensitization that needs to be dealt with (see also Gadotti, 2008: 20-21).
In this regard, in two schools the students established short-term working groups that informed other students about global topics or sold fair-trade products during breaks or school festivities.But, although research reveals that such concrete engagement options help to increase an understanding of global interrelatedness (Asbrand, 2009a), it seemed to be difficult to establish suitable structures for more sustainable student participation.

Cooperation between enrichment and professionalization
When asked about cooperation with the NGO, the teachers mentioned personnel and material support as being particularly attractive: Aw: Yes, helpful; well these fantastic personnel and the material support of the [NGO] and also the contact to other NGOs; as already mentioned, [three NGOs] are working here, and these contacts are super, not only for the insiders that have always undertaken something somehow together with the [NGO] but also much further.And that was a great enrichment that external people came; that aspects could be financed which a school would otherwise have been unable to afford; the good materials we were provided with and that also cost a lot; that's really great.And we would appreciate it if this could go on.
However, data analysis made it obvious that the teachers' reasons for taking up this support were quite heterogeneous, ranging from 'offering students something special' to making adjustments to subject-specific syllabi.
These heterogeneous reasons implicitly contain a third trade-off to be outlined in this article: the trade-off between the interest in an external enrichment of teaching on the one hand, and the interest in the professionalization of teachers and the school as an organization on the other hand.
Research shows that this trade-off is quite common in school-improvement processes (see for example Bergmüller, 2010: 167-68).On the one hand, due to the increasing challenges they face in their daily work, many teachers welcome relief and appreciate inputs from external experts.In the case of this study, the teachers regarded the NGO input as a superb opportunity to gain authentic access to global topics.Additionally, schools are increasingly required to open up towards their surroundings.This also leads to greater interest on the part of schools in cooperating with local partners outside the school.Unsurprisingly, participating teachers regarded the educational offer of the NGO to be a beneficial (external) enrichment of their own teaching.
On the other hand, due to the pressure of school profiling and the deregulation of curricula that challenges teachers to specify the learning contents themselves, there is also a necessity for further professional development that enhances their own expertise.Against this background, it comes as no surprise that teachers were quite open to further stimuli and counselling with regard to their own professionalization.
Not least due to the limitation of funding, the NGO itself aimed at initiating processes that would help schools become autonomous with respect to global education.This meets general recommendations, which regard global education as an (interdisciplinary or subject-specific) approach that should be implemented as an autonomous, school-internal teaching principle capable of surviving without the help of NGOs (Siege et al., 2007(Siege et al., , 2015)).
However, in all participating schools the teachers mentioned the same reservations about a possible autonomous continuation of global education: Dw: The difficulty I see is if I say ok we continue and we somehow try to continue our project with the [NGO], there is always the idea: oh yes, there will again be many nice offers that we can just simply book.@(.)@The real artistry is to say yes but this is only a kind of start-up financing, that's something that in the end should take place without the [NGO].However, this claim often gets (3) undermined by the stress argument, in line with the motto 'we just can't do it at the moment' .
One obstacle to the independent continuation of global education is the fact that the project focused on delivering educational events in classes more than on providing teacher training.
This would not have been a great problem if the different approaches had not coexisted within one school.
The coexistence of the two approaches carries the risk of increasing the workload of the NGO to a point where it might no longer be efficient with regard to assets and liability.The reason for this is that each approach necessitates different modes of interaction.Global education as an external enrichment of teaching leads to NGOs acting as suppliers and keeps teachers in a more passive role.A greater interest in professionalization requires training and counselling and entails actively involving teachers.Here, the focus is less on external enrichment of teaching and more on helping teachers find suitable links for global education and the curricula, i.e. the school programme.Additionally, certain forms of in-service training are necessary to ensure that in the medium term the teachers would be able to realize global education without NGO support.The coexistence of both interests means combining both modes of interaction, and data analysis showed this requires a great effort.

Potential of NGOs as stakeholders of global education in the school sector
Empirical evidence suggests that cooperation in the form of a more intermittent relationship runs the risk of not always using the learning settings to their full potential (Behr-Heintze and Lipski, 2004;Arnoldt and Züchner, 2008).Thus, it is a positive trend that NGO-school cooperation has become more continuous.Empirical evidence also points to this as a positive trend: De Faria et al. (2010) outline the importance of cooperation partners for the development of innovation activities, and research in the field of political education shows that schools develop a greater openness for local and global problems if they cooperate more continuously with external partners (see, for example, Becker, 2010).
However, the more continuous NGO-school cooperation is, the more certain challenges surface.The trade-offs outlined above point at the following three basic challenges: • the challenge of coherence in educational approaches • the challenge of sufficient compatibility of educational objectives • the challenge of sustainability.
The question arises of how to conceptualize more continuous forms of cooperation.
The empirical evidence in the study suggests five aspects that may be helpful: • Strengthen curricular links: at a school level, global education has to compete for time, space, and attention with many other initiatives.As research shows, innovations have a greater chance of being implemented if they have a strong relationship to teaching as the core business of teachers and if they are regarded as being relevant for improving the quality of teaching.So it might be helpful to strengthen the link between the educational offer of NGOs and curricular guidelines.With its domain-specific approach, the Cross-Curricular Framework for Global Development Education might provide useful points of reference and could help NGOs and teachers to conceptualize educational events according to the requirements of formal learning.
• Use existing structures: NGOs should embed their cooperation in existing organizational structures in schools (e.g.in-service trainings, subject-related team meetings etc.).Not only might this help teachers avoid extra stress, it might also facilitate the common planning process.However, it would be necessary that NGOs ask for transparency with regard to these structures and that they are willing to engage with these structures.
• Link enrichment to school-internal processes of reflection: in those cases where teachers seek NGO-school cooperation as a (sporadic) enrichment of their own teaching, NGOs should nevertheless try to link these enrichments to school-internal processes of collective reflection, for example, as they happen in subject-specific team meetings as well as meetings of the whole staff.This might help set the stage for an increase in effect and ultimately sustainability, as this could moderate the transition from enrichment to professionalization.
• Longer-term planning: NGOs should take into consideration that schools lack flexibility in process planning.Thus, it might be helpful to plan cooperation projects on a longer-term basis.NGOs that receive funding have to do this anyway and schools also have to follow a curriculum-related timeframe.This planning should be harmonized and made accessible to everyone participating in the process.Additionally, in our case study the participating NGO had prepared a cooperation contract to agree upon the different steps and measures of the implementation process.Even if NGOs are not authorized to instruct schools, such a contract can help maintain orientation as well as raise the mutual commitment.
• Establish scope for engagement: last but not least, NGOs and schools should think about reasonable structures for student participation that might meet students' sensitization.Otherwise, global education would lose much of its potential in schools (Asbrand, 2009a).Moreover, NGOs (in consideration of the Beutelsbacher consensus 1 ) can act as role models that show global conjunctions and illustrate civic participation.Here, approaches of service learning might serve as conceptual suggestions.
Against the background of these suggestions, the potential of NGOs as stakeholders for global education in schools can be seen as follows: 1.There is an increasing awareness of the importance of (holistically) dealing with global issues in education policy.However, not all teachers are willing and prepared to teach such issues and foster global social learning.Here, NGOs can provide teachers and students with valuable experiences and expertise.
2. The Cross-Curricular Framework for Global Development Education provides only a legitimation but has little power when it comes to promoting the implementation of global education in schools.Apart from that, research in the field of school development shows that top-down processes of implementing innovations run a high risk of failure.Instead, an active basis is needed that supports the implementation of innovation.NGOs can provide such a basis.
3. The critique that formal education lacks sufficient life relevance is not new, and the efforts to find appropriate points of contact between learning contents and students' lives are a pedagogical constant.However, with regard to the discussion about possible impulses from non-formal education for the conceptualization of formal education, the cooperation between NGOs and schools could serve as an example of a strategy in which non-formal elements are gradually incorporated by formal education in order to continuously meet the needs of individuals and society.
4.Last but not least, NGOs are acting as important societal sensors in light of increasing transnational problems (Eberlein, 2002).In this regard, their globally oriented work can illustrate civic participation as a mode of political action and thus enhance political and social learning in schools.
Dr Claudia Bergmüller is an educational researcher at the University of Bamberg.Her field of specialty is global education and school development.She is currently finishing her postdoctoral thesis about transformative education for global justice.
Besides her position at the university, she works as a consultant for NGDOs with a special focus on the evaluation of development education programs.Contact: claudia.bergmueller@uni-bamberg.de

Notes
1 The Beutelsbacher consensus provides minimum standards for civic education in Germany.Among others, it prohibits teachers from forcing students to accept their point of view, thereby preventing them from developing a personal opinion.It also includes the requirement to teach controversial issues in a manner that preserves the main points of the controversy without attempting to impose the teacher's views.