Diskurs hoch 2 - Wissen, Diskurs und Praxis in der Offenen Jugendarbeit

The project “Diskurs² - knowledge, discourse and practice in open youth work” is about strengthening open child and youth work (hereinafter referred to as “OKJA”) in German-speaking countries. The important social significance of the OKJA requires that it conducts structured discourses on relevant topics for young people. Not least because we want to be able to take up the issues in OKJA's practice on site. This results in the following needs: 1. The OKJA lacks an established discourse structure through which current topics can be addressed and developed. 2. For relevant discourses, the OKJA specialists, the representatives of associations, universities and training and further education need available knowledge that can be accessed quickly and easily and sorted by topic. 3. Prepared practical knowledge is an important basis for being able to act on site in the work of the OKJA. As a model, five fundamental subject areas of the OKJA are prepared in an international exchange by the participating umbrella organizations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol using a specific discourse structure. The practical knowledge is synergistically linked with the theoretical knowledge.

The project pursued three corresponding target areas: 1. A model discourse structure was tested in the steps of finding topics, discursive reflection and preparing materials. A short guide shows the processes of the discourse structure. 2. The five current topics of the OKJA: digitalization, democracy education, social inclusion through (crisis-proof!) participation, education for sustainable development, and European identity are in broad discourse in the participating countries using “topic spaces”. The thematic rooms were developed and validated through the synergistic linking of representatives from theory and practice. The results are prepared and published and available to experts on the knowledge platform https://www.oja-wissen.info/. A short guide for teaching, training and further education has been created. 3. The practical knowledge, particularly for the subject areas mentioned, is prepared and made available to specialists using an established and validated procedure. The materials in a sufficient number of the topics covered are available, expanded to include theoretical approaches and accessible on the knowledge platform https://www.oja-wissen.info/.