#  TU Dresden Case Writing Partnership  

 



### Teaching Democracy: Case-Based Democratic Education in Teacher Training (Dresden Freiraum Project)

   ![A group of scholars standing outside a white building](/sites/g/files/omnuum3616/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-10/TU%20Dresden%20Team%20.jpeg?itok=yEzJyG7B) 

 

The Dresden Freiraum Project, "Teaching Democracy: *Kasuistische Demokratiebildung im Lehramt*," empowers future teachers to navigate complex socio-political and religious challenges in schools through case-based learning. Drawing inspiration from Stanford's Center for EdEthics (formerly housed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education), the project adapts normative case study methods developed by Professor Meira Levinson to the German educational context in Saxony (a polarized and secularized context in the Eastern part of Germany, former GDR), emphasizing multi-perspectivity, structured discussion protocols, and stakeholder analysis.

  
Interdisciplinary collaboration is central to the project, uniting Religious Education (Catholic/Protestant), Philosophy/Ethics, Civic Education, Art, and Music didactics at Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden). The project benefits from additional partnerships within Germany, including the *Initiativzentrum für politische Bildung* (TU Dortmund) and the *Institut für Didaktik der Demokratie* (Hannover), fostering a vibrant network for democratic education.

The cases from this project include:

- [The Invisible Majority](https://www.justiceinschools.org/invisible-majority). (German Version: *Die unsichtbare Mehrheit*) A secondary school must decide whether to run a workshop on using gender-inclusive language, despite community concerns and a government mandate to maintain the German language’s highly-gendered grammatical structures.
- [Safe Space or Brave Space? Gender Diversity in Catholic Schools](https://www.justiceinschools.org/resource/safe-space-or-brave-space-case-study). (German Version: *Sexuelle Vielfalt an katholischen Schulen*) A fictional case inspired by real cases, situated in the context of German teacher education.
- [Remembrance of a Different Kind](https://www.justiceinschools.org/resource/remembrance-different-kind-case-study). (German Version: *Erinnerung anderer Art*) Elisa Böhm, a teacher at a secondary school in Dresden, must decide how to handle the information that Finn, the popular student council president, belongs to far-right groups, just before he is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the May 8 commemoration ceremony.