Civic Education as an Interdisciplinary Subject in Austria. A Review

Abstract

The article gives an overview of Civic Education (CE) inside the Austrian school system. CE has an interdisciplinary approach as a teaching principle but is also part of regular subjects like history. The introduction of CE as such a principle has been extremely important, but in some cases its existence is willingly used as an alibi for later inactivity. It is argued that there is especially a total lack of initial and further teacher trainings on CE. CE threatens to become an area of contents and didactics chosen by chance. A systematic analysis and evaluation of its interdisciplinary focus is still at the very beginning.