Kinder- und Jugendpartizipation aus der Sicht von Bildungsakteur:innen

The implementation of participation opportunities for children and young people in out-of-school education depends to a relevant extent on the efforts of adult actors. Based on this assumption, this article deals with the question of which understandings of participation are held by education actors. For this purpose, we conducted 18 interviews with actors from a total of four municipalities. At the time of the survey, they all belonged to municipal networks whose goal is to establish and expand cultural education opportunities for children and young people. The theoretical framework of the article is based on the discussion of a participation model that deals with the role of adults in the participation process of young people and the associated effects of different forms of participation. The evaluation of the interviews followed a structuring qualitative content analysis. Following this, we identified three types of actors, which we call idealists, pragmatists and sceptics. We present these in the results section of our paper. Finally, we discuss the results of our study with regard to the findings and the current state of research, the theoretical framework of the study and the choice of method.