Towards a Democracy-Conducive Education in Digital Cultures. An Example from Geography Teacher Education

Resumo

If critique is condition of democracy, teacher education must find ways to foster a critical and emancipatory attitude towards today’s challenges in order to be democracy-inducive. In this regard, a teaching concept, designed for and conducted in geography teacher education at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (FSU), Germany, is illustrated in this chapter. The teaching concept addresses two contemporary challenges of sustainable teacher education: digital transformation and its consequences in an educational context, and the disconnection of theory and practice in higher education. Here, the focus is on the theory-driven conceptualization of the teaching format and the evaluation of its first iteration via experiential reflection and survey. In combination, these facets lead to several thoughts on geography teacher education, aimed at fostering critical and emancipatory involvement of prospective teachers with subject-specific learning opportunities of the digital in geography education.