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. 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. 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. 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.

Dr. Antje Gansewig worked in the fields of political extremism, crime prevention and civic education for several state institutions (e.g., State Prevention Council Schleswig-Holstein, National Center for Crime Prevention, Federal Agency for Civic Education). Currently, she is a researcher at the University of Oldenburg, Institute for Social Sciences, Department for Political Education.

Structure of the book.- Synopsis.