Motivation in political education lessons

Abstract

The development of political competence is an important task of political education in school. It requires volition and motivation to solve tasks that are presented in political education lessons or in daily life. Cognitive abilities and skills are needed for that purpose. Emotions can also play a role. Competences are social, emotional, volitional and cognitive achievement dispositions (Weinert 2001) required to cope with problems in the area or domain of politics. Thus, political competence is a complex construct that is not only based on subject-specific content knowledge, but also on other motivational and volitional factors, for example. This reflects the problem of the current paradigm shift from provider orientation to customer orientation, or from the input to the learning results as the outcome. Customer orientation means the focus on competences as a way of describing the outcome in concrete terms.