Democratic Learning Processes: Conceptual and Historical Challenges

In this article democratic learning is conceptualised with inspiration from two academic traditions, one being the conceptions of citizenship, political identities and deliberative democracy in political sociology; the other theories and research on social and lifelong learning. The first part of the article outlines the authors' understanding of the core concepts involved. In the second part these conceptual discussions are related to two themes: the question of public adaptation of historical experiences in connection with the German reunification and the learning perspectives related to women's empowerment and inclusion in the Danish democratic model. On the background of these two analyses the authors finally discuss some current democratic problems with integrating the diversity represented by ethnic minority groups. The discussion emphasizes the learning theory perspective on the initiative to abolish of obligatory native language teaching in the Danish elementary school.