Global Learning in Extracuriccular Settings

Market-oriented conceptions of social order among youths

Abstract

In the current debate on sustainable development, education is seen as a necessary condition for the politically desired social-ecological transformation. The educational concepts of Education for Sustainable Development and Global Learning are at the centre of this debate. Based on an empirical, explorative study, the following article provides an insight into how young people with little prior knowledge of the subject deal with various areas of global learning in an extracurricular (political) educational setting. How do existing social patterns of interpretation and ideas of social order become relevant for young people when dealing with these topics? The qualitative-reconstructive approach in this paper is based on the documentary method.

The analyses show a market-oriented conception of social order on the part of young people, which finds expression in discrepancies between moral claims and possibilities for action as well as in a dominance of capitalist economic logic thinking that posits market laws as a supposedly unchangeable structure. Finally, this paper discusses the added value of sociological or social science knowledge about social interpretation patterns for the educational concepts mentioned above.