Befähigung zu gesellschaftlicher und politischer Verantwortungsübernahme als Teil Globalen Lernens – Was heißt hier Neutralität?

Education for Sustainable Development and in particular Global Learning as political education fundamentally offer a wide range of thematic possibilities for shaping and stimulating political learning and education processes. In school practice, this potential often remains untapped as there is a great deal of uncertainty among teachers as to when the discussion of these topics will become “political” and thus, supposedly, not “neutral” but, under certain circumstances, overwhelming. The demand for neutrality, which is addressed to teachers, but which is also adopted by (prospective) teachers themselves as part of their pedagogical professionalism, leads to a focus in educational practice or in the preparation for this, on “non-controversial” ecological conditions. Addressing politically evolved structures and global injustices, which are central to Global Learning, seems to be in conflict with the claim to be a professional, i.e. “neutral” teacher. Thereby it plays a role that the question of the normativity of the concepts is little reflected. With the help of an empirical research setting, this article explores the question of how the professional self-image of (prospective) teachers is shaped in the context of the debate about the political element and normativity in Global Learning and their treatment in relation to the supposed requirement of neutrality, and which challenges this poses for the area.