Competencies in social studies education in lower secondary schools: a theoretical view with examples from the Danish folkeskole (samfundsfag 2014) and Germany (Politische Bildung)

The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) has legally institutionalized the movement towards expressing curricular content, or aims of school-subjects, in terms of competencies. In Denmark the curriculum for the folkeskole was rewritten in 2014, also with the aim of expressing the aims of the subjects in terms of competencies. The paper discusses how learning aims in social studies education are expressed in the curriculum for samfundsfag (social studies) from 2014. I take as point of departure a discussion of competencies in the German Politische Bildung that has evolved since 2004 when the GPJE (Society for Civic Education Didactics and Civic Youth and Adult Education) put forward a proposal for national standards in Politische Bildung (civic education), which both has spurred a widespread academic discussion and has inspired curricula in several states in Germany. The German discussion is compared to the way competencies are expressed in the Danish curriculum, and preliminary results from an empirical study of the teaching of samfundsfag in a Danish folkeskole are included in the discussion.