Civic education at lower secondary level. Manifestations and challenges with the example of teaching sequences on «Europe – EU – Switzerland»

Abstract

With the introduction of curriculum 21, history teachers at lower secondary level will be faced with the challenge of also teaching civic education – a subject that, however, has its own principles, perspectives, concepts and competencies. To what extent do teachers currently succeed in achieving this? We present the results of our teaching analyses, based on eight double lessons on the subject of «Europe – EU – Switzerland», carried out by four teachers. We focus on two aspects: To what extent are the teachers a) displaying political expertise
on the subject level and b) addressing subject specific competences in the formulated assignments?