Political education and the young learner

Abstract

Political understanding begins in early childhood (Greenstein, 1965) and young people are aware and knowledgeable about politics from an early age (Götzmann 2015). Political education from early school years therefor plays an important role in the development of young peoples’ relationship with the political sphere. This panel is interested in bringing together a series of interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical papers about how education can contribute to young peoples’ current and future relationship with the political sphere from an early age. This includes for instance how young people understand politics in a wide sense, how they deal with conflicting perspectives, how they cognitively process political news, developmental stages and in what ways education can close the gap between young learners and the political world. This panel seeks to respond to the tendency of young people experiencing politics as not relevant or uninteresting for themselves and their lives. The goal is to elucidate how we can build engagement and competence for future democratic participation in a political sphere that seems to be getting harder to comprehend from an early age.

Title	Details
Does political institution affect civic education?: a comparative analysis	View Paper Details
Young children`s notions of politics – empirical findings from investigations of the youngest children in the Norwegian Primary School	View Paper Details
Learning to disagree – conflict orientation among Norwegian adolescents.	View Paper Details
Simulation Games as a Tool for Political Learning about the EU in Primary School? Results of an Intervention Study	View Paper Details