Part 1: Methods and Strategies for Teachers

The role of school in the phase of early prevention of radicalisation processes can be summarised in the following elements (RAN Policy Paper – Transforming schools into labs for democracy, 2018):

• Raising awareness and promoting basic values, rights and freedoms in democratic societies;
• Enabling students to explore their ideas in inclusive settings
• Providing a safe space to address controversial and conflicting issues
• Challenging the idea of absolute leadership and authority conveyed by extremist ideologies that can have an effect of fascination toward youngsters in a phase of identity quest or crisis.
• Opposing to this idea the values of pluralism, acceptance of compromises and contrast of interests and especially the importance of representation of minorities

• Deconstructing narratives of “us” against “them”
• Valuing the contribution that diversity has given and gives to our pluralistic society
• Addressing topics of culture and identities, gender roles and migration – that are key topic exploited by extremist groups to promote discriminative narratives, hate and violence
• Enhancing anti-biases approaches, countering stereotypes and intercultural awareness

• Raising awareness on the topics of hate speech and fake news with special reference to technical functions and algorithms that shape the reality online
• Proving tools to consciously approach online media via fact-checking and online verification of information
• Addressing information disorder, understanding how it is affecting democracy and empowering pupils in resist to these processes

To be effective, any strategy of radicalisation prevention following these three main pillars, needs to educate students but beforehand empower teachers, challenging their own possible biases.

For this reason, the structure of this programme, as already presented, follows two directions, providing training for teachers, as well as a guide for workshops and activities to be implemented with students.

Go ahead for starting your training in the following sections, navigating through the different topics. Select what is more interesting for you and start learning and practicing!