The Project DEINS! – Democratic and Intercultural School Development in Brandenburg

DEINS! stands for democratic and intercultural school development. This describes the aim of DEINS! to promote democratic and intercultural school development in Brandenburg. DEINS! invites all people in and around the school sector to participate in the development of a democratic school culture.
 
Within the framework of the project DEINS! a Brandenburg network is being established and qualified between schools orientated in a democracy pedagogical way, process facilitators for democratic and intercultural school development as well as public institutions. Thus pupils in Brandenburg shall be supported in gaining the social, intercultural and democratic key competences required by the OECD within everyday scholastic life.

In order to reach this goal, DEINS! is charged with the following tasks:

• qualification of support teachers as process facilitators for democratic and intercultural school development
• training courses for teachers and students for democratic and intercultural school development
• foundation/accompaniment of regional, interdisciplinary school networks for democratic and intercultural school development, which are supported by the process facilitators who are qualified within the project
• study trips to democracy schools/international conferences on democratic education in Israel, Poland and Northern Ireland
• nationwide and regional specialist events
• compilation of a Brandenburg specific manual “Democratic and Intercultural School Development“, in which the experiences of the networking and advisory activities are compiled and edited for further actions.

Background

Democracy needs democrats. In order to acquire democratic competences students must gain their own experiences with democratic decision-making processes in everyday school life.

Experiences with democracy in their own environment are formative for their attitudes, promote civil society's involvement and encourage students to support the equal participation of all community members.

Therefore a democratic, intercultural school culture that is characterised by acceptance has a positive effect on school quality and learning success and contributes to the reduction of right-wing extremism, racism and discrimination. At the same time students can acquire through a democratic school culture the democratic and intercultural key competences required by the OECD 2002. This is a precondition in order to get along in a heterogenic society and to successfully take part in the working life.
 
Many schools in Brandenburg are already organising their school culture in a democratic way. Some schools were accompanied through programmes such as the nationwide pilot scheme by the Bund-Länder Commission “Learning and Living Democracy”(“Demokratie lernen und leben”) or the RAA projects “Schools Strike New Paths”(“Schulen gehen neue Wege”) and “Collectively Experiencing Democracy – Hands Across the Campus" (“Demokratie gemeinsam erfahren – Hands Across the Campus”).

The goal of DEINS! is to expand these processes and to anchor them nationwide. We want to consolidate networks in Brandenburg and make a long-term contribution to transferring individual “projects” at schools into integrated “programmes” of democratic and intercultural school development.


Offers

• accompaniment throughout the implementation of democratic and intercultural school development
• networking with schools orientated in a democracy pedagogical way, process facilitators and Brandenburg cooperation partners from the field of democratic and intercultural school development
• qualification of support teachers and process facilitators for intercultural and democratic school development
• student training in the area of peer leadership
• -study trips to democracy schools/international conferences on democratic education in Israel, England and the Netherlands
• specialist conferences on democratic and intercultural school development with international guests
• advisory services and further training for the implementation of democracy pedagogical praxis modules, e.g.:
• introduction of the class council
• involvement of students
• Collectively Experiencing Democracy – Hands Across the Campus (Demokratie gemeinsam erfahren – Hands Across the Campus)
• collectively developing the class rules
• Service Learning (Lernen durch Engagement)
• constructive conflict handling
• social learning
• prejudice-aware learning with the Anti-Bias approach