Civics Education
Civics education has made its way back to the center of public and media attention. This is mainly a result of the recent threats to consolidated democracies as well as to ongoing prevalence of political extremism. Civics education in this context is seen as a preventive means to foster democratic values and to prevent radical polarization. The ways in which we can resolve societal conflicts in general and how to prevent radical polarization and extremism more specifically are amongst the PRIF’s research priorities. PRIF provides this knowledge and introduces it into civic education in and out of school as part of a dialog-oriented transfer of knowledge.
Photo: nchenga via flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0
A variety of PRIF projects aim at identifying the causes of extremism and use this knowledge to develop effective preventive approaches. Today’s societal conflicts often have a global core, even if they appear in locally specific ways. Our conflicts often cluster around issues related to globalization such as economic interdependence, the global climate crises or pandemics, global mobility and migration, or cultural diversity. More than ever, today’s youth is required to navigate the global political sphere, to build knowledge on dynamic global crises, and to understand how they can have an impact on their own local contexts.
Our experts are engaged in facilitating workshops, presentations and professional development at schools and other providers of civics programs. At the same time, school classes or courses are invited to visit PRIF and gain insights into the work of the institute as part of a guided tour.
If you are interested, please contact schule@prif.org.
Students and teaching staff are welcome to visit the PRIF’s library throughout the opening hours for research. For library visits by classes or groups, please contact the library management in advance.
PRIF’s first children’s book “Die Wutbanane” (“The Rage Banana”), published in 2020 by Springer Verlag, addresses different forms of government framed by an amusing narrative suitable for children in elementary schools.
"Global Citizenship Education"
Throughout its history PRIF has shown outstanding research and engagement around resolving global conflicts and crises. It is our mission to equip youth with the knowledge, skills, and values they need to to understand their globally interconnected world and its conflicts as well as the approaches to solve them. Thus, we aim at working with educators and schools to bring peace- oriented civics education into the classrooms.
