Pupils' Political Knowledge regarding the European Union

Abstract

Young people's competencies to be enhanced by civic education in order to enable them to take part in society as active citizens have been intensely discussed by the scientific community. While the specific way of integrating political knowledge into theoretical models of competency is debated as a controversial issue, its relevance is generally accepted. In spite of its widely accepted salience, the empirical investigation of political knowledge is less developed than one might expect, partially due to measurement difficulties. The study presented here focuses on the political knowledge of German pupils in secondary and grammar schools, looking at both their objective and subjective (perceived, self-evaluated) knowledge with regard to the European Union (EU). The potential influence of various predicators on both types of knowledge – such as gender, cultural capital, migration background, school grade, news consumption, class climate and attitudes towards the EU – is determined and analysed. Furthermore, the design of the study allows for investigation of whether some factors systematically affect the relation between objective and subjective political knowledge – in other words, whether members of certain subgroups evaluate their individual EU knowledge differently. Among other implications, this would put the adequacy of self-reported knowledge as a proxy indicator for objective political knowledge into question.