Introduction

In times of social polarization, increasing disinformation, and declining trust in political institutions, democracy faces major challenges in many countries, including Austria (Praprotnik, 2022). In schools, civic education (also referred to as political education) aims to enable young people to critically reflect on social power relations, interests, and values, and to actively participate in shaping political processes. A key challenge is that civic education in Austria is not taught as a separate subject in most types of schools, but rather as an interdisciplinary teaching principle or, in some cases, a combined subject. Since many other teaching principles must also be taken into account, there is always the problem that civic education is only dealt with marginally or is completely lost due to the abundance of teaching principles (Zentrum polis, 2025; IGPB, 2025). One promising approach to implementing civic education in the classroom is the education approach service learning. The aim of service learning is, on the one hand, to “strengthen democracy and civil society” and, on the other, to “change teaching and learning culture” (Seifert et al. 2019, p. 13). Students engage in civil society, reflect on what they have learned in class, and experience the impact their actions have on society (Slepcevic-Zach & Fernandez 2021). Through its practical relevance, action orientation, and interdisciplinary learning, this approach promotes personal and social skills as well as a sense of responsibility—important dimensions of learning about democracy (Fahrenwald, 2024). In addition, service learning opens up the school to society and enables new forms of cooperation (e.g., with associations, communities, museums). In order to implement service learning, teachers need not only basic theoretical knowledge but also other important skills, such as communication skills, teamwork, student orientation, and democratic values.

In this presentation, the preliminary findings of a quantitative study will be presented, which addresses the following research questions:

• How do teachers with and without experience in civic education by service learning rate the importance of this topic in schools?

• What understanding of their profession do teachers with experience in civic education by service learning have?

• How can the current status of implementation in schools be described?

Methods

To answer the research questions, teachers from all types of schools throughout Austria will be surveyed in 2026 in a quantitative survey using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire covers the following topics:

• Relevance in schools

• Civic education through service learning in the classroom

• Intra-school processes that promote democracy

• Civic education through extracurricular cooperation

• Questions on professional attitudes and self-concept

• Socio-economic questions

The questionnaire will be distributed to teachers several times via newsletters, relevant mailing lists, and direct mail. All responses will be recorded digitally and evaluated statistically according to topic blocks, federal states, school types, and professionalization with learning through engagement.

The survey is conducted by the research network “Hochschulen Engagiert Österreich” (Universities Engaged Austria), which is an association of scientists from various universities in Austria who are dedicated to the topics of third mission, service learning, and campus community partnerships in schools and universities in various facets of their research and teaching.

Results and Discussion

The survey began in February 2026, and the presentation will showcase and critically discuss the initial findings of the survey.

Educational Significance of the research

Young people must be prepared to actively shape the democracy of the future. This is a major challenge for the education system, and teachers in particular need to be well supported in this regard. Service learning is a good way to achieve this. The results of the study provide a basis for the development of possible further training courses for teachers, but also for discussion about changes to the curriculum.

Introduction: Theoretical background, aims, and research questions.

Public engagement is increasingly prioritised in agendas on democratic resilience and institutional trust. The OECD’s work on citizen participation and trust foreground voice, responsiveness, and evidence-informed decision-making as key levers for strengthening trust (OECD 2024). The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report (2026) frames trust as a central condition for cooperation in an increasingly contested and fragmented global landscape. These agendas also align with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16: “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” (UN 2025).

A common institutional intuition is that contested public debates reflect a knowledge gap or misperceptions, and that the route to improved engagement lies in communicating better evidence and clearer explanations. However, science communication research indicates that facts alone are not enough in generating public understanding (Hornsey 2020). Institutions therefore need to account for how individuals process information, rather than assuming that accurate facts will translate straightforwardly into understanding. This processing is shaped by complex systems of belief and judgement, including motivated cognition and epistemic cognition (Sinatra and Hofer 2021). Together, these influence what people notice and trust, how they evaluate evidence and expertise, how they interpret uncertainty and disagreement, and how they engage with both institutional communications and consultation processes.

The paper asks: (1) How should civic institutions conceptualise the relationship between informing and consulting when public judgement is shaped by epistemic beliefs and information processing? (2) What role can public education play in supporting the development of informed an informed citizenry?

Methods

This paper is a conceptual and design-oriented study, anchored in a policy case of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, through which to problematise civic engagement, exploring current practices and challenges. The goal is to develop an initial framework, a “version 1” map of the engagement problem space, that integrates communication, consultation, and public education. This is produced through conceptual framework analysis (Jabareen 2009) and synthesis across multiple bodies of literature, bringing together research on public participation, science communication, and epistemic cognition. We treat the resulting map as provisional, intended to support diagnosis, design, and future empirical testing, and further interdisciplinary development, rather than to offer a final model.

Results and Discussion

The first outcome is a reconceptualisation of the activities of communication with the public and consultation of the public to consider the complexity of information processing, including the role of epistemic and motivated cognition. Treating these processes as interdependent reframes the practical task from “improve communications” or “increase consultation responses” to “design an iterative cycle that supports informed judgement and legitimate decision-making”.

Emerging from this reconceptualisation, is an argument for a distinct public education strand as part of civic engagement. Education is framed as capacity building for public judgement: enabling citizens to interpret evidence, recognise uncertainty, understand trade-offs, and engage with reasons, rather than prescribing correct opinions.

There are ethical considerations that emerge too: If institutions attend to the epistemic basis of public input, they risk epistemic gatekeeping or the appearance of dismissing citizens as uninformed. The paper therefore argues for transparent, publicly defensible frameworks for how consultation inputs are interpreted and integrated, and for ethical safeguards that distinguish evaluating reasons from excluding people.

Finally, the paper is a call to arms for cross-organisational collaboration. The challenges addressed are not institution-specific, and no single public body can realistically deliver an informed citizenry on their own. The paper therefore positions collaboration across civic institutions, educators, communicators, and researchers as necessary for problematising the challenge, planning coordinated responses, and implementing solutions with shared evaluation. The map is explicitly presented as a starting point that should be refined by wider expertise across political science, communication studies, psychology, education, sociology, philosophy, ethics, and practitioner communities.

Educational Significance of the research.

The paper advances an educational perspective on civic engagement by treating public participation as a learning problem as well as a governance problem. It contributes a structured way to conceptualise and design engagement for informed judgement, with explicit ethical attention to autonomy, inclusion, and trust. It also identifies a concrete interdisciplinary research agenda relevant to education of the future: how educational interventions, institutional communication, and participatory methods can be aligned to support resilient democracies and equitable participation in complex public decision-making.

Democracy and democracy education are central societal topics in democratically organized countries that are also highly relevant for sport pedagogy settings in both school and extracurricular contexts (Cochran-Smith 2004; Ahlrichs, & Jaitner 2025). Sport and Physical Education provide social spaces in which (young) people can experience cooperation, conflicts, rules, and collective decision making through embodied engagement with digitality, nature, and the body (Ruin, Meier, & Prügstaller 2025). Within the school context, Physical Education is frequently framed as a space that offers opportunities for participation, self-determination, and fairness, and is thus often positively associated with democratic learning experiences. At the same time, it can also constitute potentially excluding or even (anti-)democratic experiential spaces (Sandbichler, Kreinbucher-Bekerle, & Ruin 2025).

In the international discourse, democracy and democratic education in PE and PETE are articulated as relevant topics of inquiry for sport pedagogical research (Lazić & Matović 2018). Even though there seems to be a growing research body, theoretical and terminological clarification of what democratic education can actually be often remains vague. To date, there is no comprehensive review that systematically structures this discourse and addresses those theoretical and terminological clarifications.

The aim of this review is therefore to organize, trace, and critically synthesize the English-language sport pedagogical discourse on democracy education and sport (within physical education), as well as to identify existing research gaps.

The guiding research questions are as follows:

• Which lines of research on democracy education and sport (and physical education) can be identified?

• Within which subject-specific didactic discourses are issues of democracy education addressed?

• Which theoretical frameworks and terminological reference points are employed in the respective contributions?

Methods

Within the framework of a scoping review (Arksey & O’Malley 2005), English-language publications published between 2000 and 2025 were identified using the search terms “physical education” and “democracy” or “democratic” on the databases EBSCO and ERIC. Subsequently, inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined in relation to the research aims. The selected studies (n=58) were organized through an inductive category-building process in order to identify and map thematic lines of research.

Results and Discussion

Results indicate that publication output has fluctuated considerably since 2000. However, overall, a continuous increase can be observed across the period under review. Furthermore, professionalization, curriculum research, leadership, and pedagogical models emerge as overarching research fields of inquiry. With regard to terminological issues, the findings reveal a degree of terminological ambiguity. Although terms such as democratic education are frequently used, they are often not defined or only insufficiently clarified.

Educational Significance of the research

This review contributes to educational research by providing a systematic overview of how democracy education is conceptualized and addressed within sport pedagogy and Physical Education. By identifying research fields and situating them within subject-specific pedagogical discourses, the analysis highlights significant theoretical and terminological ambiguities. Addressing these ambiguities is not only relevant for sport pedagogy since a more precise terminological and theoretical clarification of democracy-related concepts in Physical Education can provide valuable insights for broader educational and pedagogical research.

Keywords:

[Sport pedagogy, Physical Education, Democracy education, Scoping Review, Terminology]

References

Ahlrichs, R., & Jaitner, D. (2025). Sportvereine als Orte der Demokratiebildung? Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten aus multidisziplinärer Perspektive. Außerschulische Bildung. Zeitschrift für politische Jugend- und Erwachsenenbildung, 56(1), 12-18.

Arksey, H., & O’Malley, L. (2005). Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. International Journal of Social Research Methodology. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(1), 19-32.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Defining the outcome of teacher education: whats social justice got to do with it?. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 32(3), 193-212.

Lazić, S., & Matović, M. (2018). Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE) in Physical Education. Sport Science and Health, 8(1), 72-76.

Ruin, S., Meier, S., & Prügstaller, E. (2025). Bewegungs- und Sportpädagogik: Grundriss einer diversitätssensiblen, digitalitätsbewussten und nachhaltigen Fachpädagogik. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt.

Sandbichler, B., Kreinbucher-Bekerle, C., & Ruin, S. (2025). ‘We Just Do What the Teacher Says’—Students’ Perspectives on Participation in ‘Inclusive’ Physical Education Classes. Educational Sciences, 15(12), 1700.