Controversies are a potentially powerful teaching tool in the management classroom enabling students to explore different perspectives on an issue and to develop their skills in areas such as critical thinking and communication. Controversy is implicit to learning and to leadership and management roles in workplaces where multiple opposing views…

Adult educators in higher education settings often facilitate topics that stir difficult dialogues on race and racism. In the United States, an increased population of racially diverse individuals set against the backdrop of our current sociopolitical climate, suggests the need for authentic conversations surrounding race remain critical. By…

A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that many history teachers avoid or minimize conversations about race for fear they will trigger "racialized conflict." This silence should raise alarms, as we know that race and racism permeate the lived experiences of teachers and students and inevitably surface in historical…

Discussions of power and privilege, oppression, and structural inequities in classrooms can produce complex understanding and critical analysis when facilitated effectively. In this article we present the critical conversations model for facilitating conversations that open up space for discussing such issues and encourage the development of…

In this article Kerry Apps introduces students to the significance of the witch-hunts in the modern era, at the time when they occurred, and in the middle of the eighteenth century. She presents her rationale for choosing the witch-hunts as a focus for the study of significance, and shows how her thinking about her teaching has evolved through her…

This article presents the current perception of dialogical teaching models as a notion that is concerned primarily with the cognitive layers of the dialogue, and focuses on the cognitive functions of learning, information processing, interpretation and decision-making. This perception, according to different researchers, ignores the relational…

This article addresses the pedagogical choices and the visceral reverberations involved in teaching porn in the university classroom. The author discusses different aims and goals for teaching pornography, as well as the some key pedagogical considerations and options involved in this, drawing on her own experiences teaching porn in Finnish gender…

Libraries have a long, though not uncomplicated, history with social justice and social advocacy. The new ACRL "Framework for Information Literacy," which is more conceptual and flexible than the original Standards, offers an opportunity for librarians to approach teaching and learning from a social justice perspective. Indeed, the…

Many teachers shy away from conversations about diversity issues in the classroom--because they feel pressured to cover the mandated curriculum, or because they worry about students' and parents' reactions, or because they're afraid they'll say the wrong thing or won't know how to respond to comments that can make everyone feel uncomfortable. In…

This paper describes the development and implementation of a three-pillared model for teaching socioscientific issues: teacher professional development; curriculum resources; and classroom support. A professional development program and curriculum resource based on the socioscientific issue of climate change was trialled with 75 Western Australian…

Evolution offers an intellectually satisfying and extremely well-supported explanation for the diversity of life in the natural world, its similarities and differences, how changes occur and how new life forms have developed. There are plenty of reasons to anticipate the teaching of evolution with exhilaration. In recent years, the issue of…

Internationally there is concern that many science teachers do not address socioscientific issues (SSI) in their classrooms, particularly those that are controversial. However with increasingly complex, science-based dilemmas being presented to society, such as cloning, genetic screening, alternative fuels, reproductive technologies and…

This article describes how the everyday experiences of a 1st grader pushed a teacher to confront gender issues in the classroom. Broadening students' ideas of what was acceptable for boys and girls is an important first step. (Contains 3 resources.)

This article examines how three culturally relevant teachers in New York City public schools challenged the concepts of race and racism which low-income adolescents of color brought to the study of history and contemporary society. Framed by concepts of culturally relevant teaching and racial literacy, the study illustrated how the teachers used…

An instructional focus on critical literacy (CL) encourages students to become active readers and writers of cultural texts so that they can create their own meanings in order to shape and transform their social conditions (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; Shor, 1992). It is, however, seldom pursued with English learners (ELs) because teachers…