Werte bilden – neutral bleiben: Ethik als wertereflektierender Unterricht: Chancen und Herausforderungen im Spannungsfeld zwischen weltanschaulichem Neutralitätsgebot und Wertevermittlung

Ethics education as value-reflective education between ideological neutrality and normative guidance

Abstract

The increasing importance of value-based education in pluralistic societies is reflected in a renewed polarisation of value debates and in a growing number of educational theory and didactics discourses. Teaching Ethics in schools in particular faces the challenge of providing normative guidance without losing its claim to ideological neutrality or undermining the autonomy of learners. This master's thesis addresses this area of tension and examines the extent to which Ethics lessons can be designed as value-reflective teaching without being indoctrinating.

Drawing on moral-philosophical, educational-theoretical, and subject-specific didactic approaches, central concepts such as values, norms, value-based education, and neutrality are defined and analysed in terms of their educational relevance. The thesis takes an analytical-didactic approach and combines curricular framework conditions with didactic considerations. It examines the normative structure of values, value formation in schools, pedagogical implications of moral and ideological plurality, and the didactic tensions and challenges of value reflection in Ethics Education.

The analysis shows that value-free neutrality in the school context is neither feasible nor pedagogically desirable, as teaching is always normatively framed. Simultaneously, the material-based teaching of fixed value systems proves to be unsustainable, as it contradicts the educational goal of autonomous judgement. Instead, value reflection is identified as a procedural educational goal of Ethics teaching, which does not aim at the adoption of certain values, but rather at the ability to critically examine, justify and reflect one's own and others' value orientations.

Overall, this thesis makes a significant contribution to the definition of Ethics education as a reflective instance within the school's educational mandate, the theoretical foundation of value reflection, and the clarification of professional Ethics in ethical education under conditions of moral plurality.