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Department of Educational Sciences and Psychology

Pascal Alscher – Dissertation successfully defended

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Nele McElvany, Pascal Alscher und zwei weitere Personen stehen vor einer Zoom Konferenz © IFS​/​TU Dortmund
Pascal Alscher successfully completes his doctorate on civic literacy in adolescence.

We congratulate Pascal Alscher, doctoral candidate in the McElvany working group, on successfully defending his dissertation on "Civic Literacy in Adolescence - Conceptualization, Operationalization and Empirical Assessment" on May 22. As a research associate at the IFS, Pascal Alscher conducts research on civic education in adolescence, focusing on civic literacy as a target competence of school education. Civic literacy encompasses the knowledge and ability to competently assess political issues, as well as the fundamental willingness to participate in politics. As part of the dissertation completed in the field of psychology, a didactically based competency model was developed which will enable the systematic empirical assessment of civic literacy at lower secondary educational level in the future. The model was subject to empirical testing in the Study on the Development of Political and Societal Competence in Adolescence (EPKO) and will be implemented in the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) from the winter semester 2024/25. The model thus forms the theoretical basis for civic literacy, which is now included in the canon of competences to be assessed by the NEPS, and will open up new perspectives for research into civic education in the future. In addition, his research is dedicated to aspects of political socialization and the quality of teaching in civic education.

The IFS would like to congratulate him on successfully completing his doctoral studies!