Conference Program

Civic education plays a central role in enabling young people to navigate pluralistic and increasingly polarized societies. Democratic competencies such as openness to diverse perspectives, political tolerance, and the ability to engage constructively with disagreement are widely regarded as key prerequisites for informed participation and democratic resilience (Avery, 2002, p. 113; Hess & McAvoy, 2014, p. 7; Mercer & Littleton, 2007, p. 2). While international research has examined deliberative formats in educational settings (Persson et al., 2020), systematically evaluated and standardized discourse interventions specifically targeting pluralistic orientations remain scarce in the German school context. Against this background, the proposed presentation introduces the conceptual framework and results of the ongoing evaluation of a discourse workshop developed by the non-profit organisation apropolis e.V. (https://apropolis.org), contributing to current debates by linking theoretical perspectives on political discourse skills with the design and empirical examination of a concrete educational intervention.

In this contribution, pluralistic orientations are understood as students' acceptance of political diversity, the perceived legitimacy of dissent, and their willingness to engage with competing political positions (Wenzel, 2023, pp. 58–61). The workshop targets this dimension of democratic learning, going beyond factual knowledge toward students' normative and dispositional engagement with political plurality.

The workshop "Streiten, aber richtig!" combines several didactic elements, including collaboratively developed discussion rules, values-based reflection phases, the analysis of critical incidents, structured confrontational discussion formats, a parliamentary role play, and a counterfactual "what if?" exercise. These elements create a learning environment that is both supportive and challenging, allowing students to practice dealing with disagreement, articulating arguments, and engaging with alternative viewpoints – skills consistently identified as core components of democratic competence in civic education research (Detjen et al., 2012; Council of Europe, 2018, p. 38).

The evaluation follows a pretest–posttest design with approximately n=600 students in grades 7 to 12 across different secondary school types, including lower and middle track, academic, special education, and vocational schools. The study aims to capture students` evaluation of the workshop as well as their learning effects using a semi-standardized questionnaire. The survey asks students` to evaluate the workshop after participation and measures changes in their discursive political self-efficacy and pluralistic orientations such as openness to opposing viewpoints. The study draws on validated scales developed by Shrout et al. (2022), whose facets emotional tolerance, intellectual tolerance, non-rigidity, and pluralistic motivation, correspond closely to the competency dimensions targeted by the workshop. The instrument has been adapted for use in the German school-age context. Additionally, instruments from Oberle et al. (2020) are used to measure changes in political interest and self-efficacy.

The presentation addresses three aspects: the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the workshop, the methodological design of the study, and selected results of the empirical evaluation. The presentation concludes by outlining perspectives for future research, including the potential of longitudinal and control-group designs and additional qualitative methods. By addressing both the potentials and limitations of structured discourse formats under real-world school conditions, it aims to stimulate discussion on how democratic competencies can be fostered through targeted educational interventions.