The new booklet Educational Processes, originally published by the Academy for Political Education in 2016 and now available in a revised, English edition, is devoted to designing learning processes in political education. The focus is on planning a sequence of steps and interventions that make good learning plannable for educators and participants of educational events, but at the same time do not prescribe too much. Different types of interventions are possible for this purpose: depending on the aim of the educational event as well as preliminary considerations of the setting and target group, they can be used and varied in different ways—for example, in their sequence, intensity, and design. This is what we understand as the meaning of designing educational processes.
Julia Lehnhof works as an advisor for critical political education at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Focal points of her work are the foundations of global emancipatory education as well
as a reflection of the work of political educators and networking of multipliers.
Iven Saadi is a freelance educator and facilitator and supports groups, teams, and organizations in learning and change processes. He is also a lecturer on child rights and working children and youth. He approaches all these activities with an emancipatory and intersectional/anti-discriminatory focus. As an educator and facilitator, he works with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany and internationally.
Hana Pfennig works as an advisor for the executive of the international department of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, where she focuses on internal and external communication, qualification, and networking of international work.
The booklet adds a meta-level to the goal–>content–>method planning approach widely known in Germany. This meta-level consists of clarifying the political purpose of the respective educational event. Clearly, political education should address the topic of refugee policy, for example. But with what purpose? Is it about the networking of actors, or should encounters take place, including with refugees? Is the aim to build a foundation of knowledge or to share experiences? Should political activities be trained or is the goal to develop political demands? Should people be won over to participate or is it a matter of initiating one’s own projects? Depending on the purpose, a different sequence of process steps will prove to be suitable within the temporal and spatial framework of political education.
The booklet seeks to establish a basis with which the perceived need for political education can be supported with an encouragement to act. It is aimed both at actors who are not confident in certain event formats as well as those who are looking for new inspiration. We invite colleagues from throughout the field of political education to joyfully face the challenges of political education, to question their doubts, and to give something new a try. Those expecting rehashed content, standardized methods, and plug-and-play answers in this booklet will probably be disappointed. Those who are looking for inspiration to translate content into (learning) processes will find what they are looking for.