Intention is not method, belief is not evidence

Introduction

For over 20 years, school interventions involving former right-wing extremists have been popular in Germany. In practice, they are advertised and conducted as both civic education and extremism prevention.

Approach and Content

This book uses an evidence-based and interdisciplinary approach to examine the potentials and challenges of this format. It provides a thematic embedding of German application, a comprehensive review of attributed impact assumptions and the state of related research.

Insights and Contributions

Furthermore, this research offers highly valuable, unique and comprehensive insights based on empirical evidence. It thus contributes to a better understanding of the format and its complexity.

Findings and Implications

Overall, the findings give no clear indication that the involvement of former right-wing extremists in schools initiate civic education processes or prevent political extremism. Rather, the investigation found fundamental needs for additional research, modification, and sensitization.

In this vein, this book makes a pioneer contribution to quality assurance and evaluation research in civic education and extremism prevention.