Civic education contributes to the prevention of political, religious or ideological extremism and its outcomes. Quality assurance in the prevention of extremism therefore also includes the evaluation of political education. The PrEval project, funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community, aims to develop needs-oriented evaluation designs for extremism prevention measures in collaboration with representatives of the professional field. In their latest publication, the PrEval authors describe how practitioners and academics can collaborate in the development of evaluation designs, using the example of the association ufuq.de.
ufuq.de is a recognized youth welfare organization and is active throughout Germany in civic education and prevention on the topics of Islam, hostility towards Muslims, and Islamism. The report reflects on the opportunities and challenges that emerged in the course of the collaboration and the implications for further evaluation projects. Among the practitioners of civic education, for example, the authors found less skepticism toward evaluations than initially suspected. Nevertheless, concerns and fears about evaluations in the prevention of extremism can be identified, which result from an insufficient culture of error management and from financial dependencies.
Further information on the project "PrEval - Evaluation Designs for Prevention Measures" at preval.hsfk.de.