School policy ideas of the Alternative for Germany in the federal states: Issue setting, strategies and justifications for dealing with heterogeneity

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Rita Nikolai
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522305017

Right-wing populist parties have been represented in parliaments at local, regional and national level in OECD countries for many years, and they are or were even involved in national governments in some countries in the 2000s and/or 2010s. Right-wing populist parties are thus no longer a marginal group phenomenon in political decision-making processes and this applies not least to the field of school policy. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013, is to be regarded as a right-wing populist party in Germany. The AfD is represented in parliamentary group strength in the Bundestag since the 2017 Bundestag election (re-elected in 09/2021) and in 15 of 16 Land parliaments in autumn 2022 (except for Schleswig-Holstein since the 05/2022 Land parliamentary election). Due to its parliamentary presence, the project examines the AfD's school policy issues, strategies, and justifications in official and non-official documents. These include election programmes, parliamentary documents (plenary debates as well as interpellations and minor questions) and social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). From the perspective of idea-based approaches, the AfD's patterns of argumentation on school policy are examined with regard to their topics, strategies and justifications for educational goals and school organisation. To channel the AfD's argumentation patterns to relevant topics in educational science, the evaluations are analysed along the heterogeneity dimensions of gender, race, class and disability. On the one hand, the project will show how idea-based approaches can be used for school policy analyses and justifications of political parties. On the other hand, the project wants to place the analyses in an educational science context in order to raise awareness for anti-liberal and democracy-endangering argumentations of right-wing populist parties in school policy using the example of the AfD. The project also aims to establish a connection to discourses in international comparison on the influence of right-wing populist parties and movements in school policies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants