‘Confrontational pedagogy’ (CP) is an umbrella term for a number of educational approaches to working with aggressive and violent young people (including ‘anti-aggressiveness training’ and ‘coolness training’) developed primarily in Germany. Its proponents argue it can be applied in a variety of settings or ‘action fields’ (Handlungsfelder) including schools, residential care homes, prisons, hostels and youth work settings (including the street), and with a range of different ‘target groups’ (Zielgruppen). Despite it being in existence for over 20 years, there are currently no translated documents in English that explain its theoretical basis or practical applications. It has been heavily criticised (see, for example, Heyder, 2008) and legally challenged, but also utilised within youth justice programmes. At present it is not practised outside of Germany, Switzerland, Austria or Luxembourg, although many aspects of it are present in current EU practice under other guises.

This chapter offers an analysis of CP based on a reading of literature produced by the Institute for Confrontational Pedagogy (Handbuch Konfrontative Pädagogik, Weidner and Kilb, 2010); a conference organised through the University of Manchester School of Law in December 2011; and three follow-up research visits to Germany. The first included a visit to a high-security (adult) prison in Celle, near Hannover, and included two days of observation of an anti-aggressiveness training programme and a number of focus groups with prisoners serving life sentences for serious violent offences. The second included observation of a coolness training programme in a high school.

An overview

CP was developed within the Frankfurt Institute for Social Work and Social Education, the Universities of Applied Sciences in Hamburg and Mannheim, and the German and Swiss Institute for Confrontational Pedagogy. Since 1994 approximately 1,200 social workers, psychologists and teachers have been certified as trainers. Today, in Germany and Switzerland, over 100 training programmes are in existence, involving more than 1,500 violent offenders, including football hooligans, gang members and neo-Nazi groups (Weidner et al, 2010).

Proponents of this approach characterise CP as intensely pragmatic and seeking to find practical solutions to violence from a wide range of theoretical paradigms, rather than adhering to one overarching world-view.