Befragung von Lehrpersonen zu Ausbildung, Unterrichtserfahrung und Staatsbürgerkunde - 1999

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), headquartered in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, was founded in 1959 and has since carried out a number of internationally comparative educational research projects. At the 1994 General Assembly, it was decided to launch a study in the field of political education at school. The IEA had already tackled this topic earlier. However, the end of the Cold War and the resulting democratization processes in different countries made it seem appropriate and desirable to update knowledge about the problems, methods, possibilities and limitations of civic education. The Department of Education of the University of Freiburg was in charge of the participation of Switzerland. A first publication with the results from the first phase of the project appeared in 1999, in the form of a volume based on case studies describing the situation of civic education in 24 countries, i.e. the majority of the 28 participating countries.
The results of these case studies were used to prepare Phase 2, which was empirically oriented. Specifically, it focused on a test to assess the civic knowledge of fourteen-year-olds and a survey of their attitudes and behavior. The sample size was around 3,000 per country (3104 in Switzerland). In total, about 90,000 young people took part in the study in this way, as well as their teachers, who were asked about their goals, methods, difficulties, priorities, etc. The publication with the results of the empirical part provides extensive information about what the young people at the end of the 90s know about the democratic processes and institutions and what they think about it. The results tend to suggest that civic education is more or less the same everywhere. Should we therefore highlight the multiplicity of situations? Certain things seem to be constant across large geographic regions. For example, civic education is too often limited to imparting knowledge from the top down, while the encouragement of critical thinking and political commitment is neglected. At least the teachers seem to thnik this way and also claim to regret this fact. Another common deficit is found in the treatment of economic issues, which leads to political issues being often treat in a abstract context.

国际教育成就评价协会（International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement，简称IEA）总部位于荷兰首都阿姆斯特丹，成立于1959年，自此开展了多项国际比较教育研究项目。1994年的全体大会上，协会决定启动学校政治教育领域的研究项目。尽管IEA此前已涉足该主题，但冷战结束及由此引发的多国民主化进程，使得更新公民教育相关问题、实施方法、发展可能性与固有局限的认知，显得尤为必要且迫切。瑞士的项目参与工作由弗莱堡大学教育系负责。项目第一阶段成果的首份出版物于1999年问世，以案例研究汇编的形式，呈现了28个参与国中占多数的24个国家的公民教育现状。
上述案例研究成果被用于筹备以实证研究为导向的第二阶段项目，具体包含两项核心内容：一是针对14岁青少年的公民知识测评测试，二是针对其态度与行为的问卷调查。各国样本量约为3000人（瑞士为3104人）。总计约9万名青少年以该形式参与研究，同时还有其授课教师参与调研，教师需回答关于教学目标、授课方法、面临困境、工作优先级等相关问题。这份呈现实证研究成果的出版物，详细披露了20世纪90年代末青少年对民主进程与制度的认知情况，以及他们对此的看法。
研究结果整体倾向于表明，各地公民教育的现状大体趋同。那么我们是否应当强调教育情境的多样性？部分共性特征在大范围地理区域内保持一致。例如，公民教育往往局限于自上而下的知识灌输，而对批判性思维的培育与政治参与的引导却遭到忽视。至少教师群体也持有此类观点，并坦言对此现状感到遗憾。另一普遍存在的短板则是对经济议题的处理不足，这使得政治议题常被置于抽象语境中探讨。