Typen des Umgangs mit der AfD unter Lehrkräften der politischen Bildung

On the one hand, the legal framework forbids teachers from acting on behalf of just one political party and warns them to make sure that their opinion is marked as just one of many possible opinions. On the other hand, they have to advocate for democratic values in the form of the fdGO and stand against, e.g., right-wing extremist views. Thus, in dealing with the AfD there is a conflict of interests. Teachers have considerable pedagogical freedom here. From interviews with seven teachers at the German academic high school called »Gymnasium« I found three types of how teachers choose to act in this matter. The distanced/assessing type of teachers aims to present the AfD from multiple perspectives, while conveying to the students that the party or some of its views may be anti-democratic. The factual/neutral type uses a fact-based and more balanced approach that tries to keep emotions out of the picture and focusses on what the AfD suggests in terms of policies. The party-aversive type tries to give little room to political parties of any kind, instead opting to discuss political issues using fictitious people with differing attitudes towards the issues. The most important differentiating factors are a belief in a sort of underdog narrative/AfD-support because of ignorance, which resources the teachers use for orientation and how they interpret them and how they handle their own subjectivity when teaching.