Call for applications: Tece fellows
We are looking for 10 participants from Germany and 10 from the U.S. to be part of a transatlantic dialogue in the field of youth and young adult civic learning.
By team tece
The Arbeitskreis deutscher Bildungsstätten e.V. (Association of German Educational Organizations) and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University are launching a new transatlantic exchange of extracurricular civic educators (TECE – Transatlantic Exchange of Civic Educators). From April 2021 to March 2022 we want to bring together German and US-American educators/professionals from the fields of civic education and engagement. civic education/engagement, with the goal of bringing together the reshape the transatlantic dimension of civic education, open up new opportunities for deeper dialogue and mutual learning, explore common and mutual learning, to explore common challenges, and to to get to know each other’s approaches and concepts in practice, and above all, to identify promising new concepts. The 20 selected fellows will actively participate in face-to-face activities in in Germany and the USA, as well as in online programs, peer-learning seminars, visits to relevant organizations, workshops and organizations, workshops and thematic small group work. include.
The effort to bring transatlantic relations back into the realm of civic education work through the TECE project comes at a critical time, as both Germany and the United States are experiencing similar societal challenges: structural racism, rising populism, high levels of societal polarization and distrust of democratic institutions and the media, not to mention the already strained transatlantic relations, all acacerbated further by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although Germany’s infrastructure for extracurricular political education
after World War II was largely rooted in U.S. re-education policies, professional and pedagogical exchange at the level of youth education work has been very sparse since then. Professional discourses in this field have developed separately, resulting in distinct and highly divergent infrastructures and concepts and approaches to work. The fellows in this exchange, supported by program staff from the two established partner organizations and other experts, will explore the similarities and differences between these systems and discuss how, despite an intertwined history and similar challenges, they have developed so challenges, the fellows are invited to look beyond the national discourse and to national discourse and to develop new ways of thinking about and perspectives on their own work.
We eagerly await applications from professionals involved in youth and young adult non-formal/extracurricular civic learning interested in exploring their work through an international perspective.