Economic and entrepreneurial themes are often framed dichotomously in literature and educational materials, with the state depicted as a paternalistic problem solver (Pott, 2004; Schlösser & Schuhen, 2017). This has consequences for young people's attitudes toward work and economic responsibility. Our qualitative teaching and research project is situated in teacher education and the field of German literature. It seeks to cultivate critical awareness of the representation of economic themes in literature, textbooks, and museum-educational concepts through student-conducted research, drawing on Imre Lakatos's notion of a research programme.
Pre-service teachers reflect on their attitudes, examine materials and media, relevant to opinion formation, and analyze both the didactic orientations of educational materials and in-service teachers' beliefs.
Adopting a multi-level qualitative empirical design, the project engages pre-service teachers as researchers and objects of research. They reflect on their own beliefs and conduct in-service teacher interviews. In parallel, they analyze curriculum-relevant texts based on the official youth book list. So we investigate
- how teachers construct economic opinions from media narratives,
- which narrative patterns dominate children's literature, and
- how these narratives shape educational beliefs and promote sustainable future literacy (Miller, 2018).
Bridging media studies, economic education, and teacher training (Marci-Boehncke, 2019), the project aims to foster critically reflective economic-, media-, and civic literacy in schools by supporting curricular innovation, developing critical awareness of ideological biases, and encouraging educational stakeholders to use economic themes and media representations as constructive anchor points for civic literacy. First results are being presented.

Authors:
Gudrun Marci-Boehncke, TU Dortmund University, Germany
Raphaela Tkotzyk, TU Dortmund University, Germany
Thorsten Dette, City Archive Wuppertal, Germany

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. phil. Gudrun Marci-Boehncke is currently holding a full Professorship in German Literature at the TU Dortmund University. Her projects cover Politics, Journalism and Media Competence (PoJoMEc) and Digital Literacy in Teachers Education.

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