Social Studies Teachers’ Reflections on Citizenship Education in Bavaria, Germany

Since the end of the Second World War, and especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European nation-states have had to negotiate tensions around citizenship and belonging as these countries have become increasingly diverse in race, ethnicity, religion, and culture (). The conflict between heritage-based citizenship laws and continued demographic changes has especially challenged Germany to reconcile its diverse society with its exclusionary notions of belonging. Citizenship education traditionally needed only to prepare those who were citizens to interact with others like themselves. However, in the late 1990s new citizenship and immigration laws officially redefined Germany as an immigrant nation. The political discourse, which has long championed a monocultural view of Germany, began to emphasize integration of immigrants and the preparation of all future citizens for participation in multicultural German and European polities. Whether education policy and practice have likewise expanded to create and enact more inclusive citizenship education has been left unprobed. This article examines, in the case of Bavaria, the reflections of social studies teachers on citizenship education. Results reveal that teachers define and enact citizenship education in ethnocultural terms.