Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/90195

This paper aims to not only determine why political, critical, and volunteer activities are interconnected and supported as political measures in Germany but also identify their political challenges. First, it presents an overview of the formation of comprehensive concepts and describes how volunteer activities have been supported as out-of-school citizenship education followed by an analysis of the practice of education using critical activities to motivate and enable political participation with critical thoughts. The focus is on voluntary service, in which volunteers are involved in organizational designs, educational practices targeted to their needs, and theoretical foundations of environmental groups with established volunteer activities as out-of-school citizenship education, with both present and past participants remaining proactive. However, the challenges facing such education include their limited criticality, the fact that social learning is not necessarily linked to democratic and/or political competences, and the assumption that participants are homogenously elite.