Democratic unity: Preventing polarisation and exclusion in Danish schools

The project was a collaboration between The Danish Centre for Prevention of Extremism (under the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI)) and the Centre for School and Learning (under University College Absalon, Denmark).

Type of Organisation: Governmental institution

The 2016 Danish national action plan 'Countering and fighting extremism and radicalisation' aims to promote democratic and civic competences amongst children and youth.

As part of realising the action plan's vison, a secondary school in the Danish city of Fredericia hosted a project titled 'Developing a whole school approach to counter hate crimes'*.

Beginning in 2017/2018, the project's goal was to strengthen the school's capacity for preventing polarising and harassing behaviour as well as for dealing with segregation, prejudice and stereotyping.

The target group for the project was the school management, teachers and educational staff — thereby securing a whole-school approach.

The project primarily comprised of the following:

1. A learning course (5 workshops for 20 to 25 teachers);
2. Action Learning across the workshops (where participants experimented with and tested the material presented in the workshops);
3. Dialogue Circles (where small groups of six teachers engaged in themes centred on democracy and prejudice, by studying academic and relevant literature).

The good practice and experiences from the project are collated and recorded in a Danish handbook, 'Democratic unity: Preventing polarisation and exclusion in Danish schools'.

*The title is paraphrased

The main deliverable and output was a handbook for teachers and educators, titled 'Democratic unity: Preventing polarisation and exclusion in Danish schools'.

The handbook, written in Danish, summarises methods and experiences from the project, and describes concrete exercises that teachers can use in their classrooms. It is a tool for educators working to promote democratic unity, active citizenship, inclusion etc.

Address

Carl Jacobsens Vej 39,
2500 Valby,
Copenhagen

Contact person: Satnam Singh
Telephone: +45 72142700
ekstremismesiri [dot] dk (Email) | Website