This article provides and reflects on an original lesson plan for engaging high school, undergraduate, or graduate students in learning fundamental concepts of environmental ethics. Implementation of this lesson plan effectively promoted critical analysis, reflection, and communication of environmental ethics issues in a seminar for second-year…

This qualitative case study sought to understand the extent to which Japanese high school social studies teachers grapple with controversial issues in their classrooms. Situated within a curricular-instructional gatekeeping framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews with eight respondents of varying backgrounds and schools in Okayama,…

A textbook activity on symbols was intended as thought provoking but instead elicited a confrontational reaction by one student which left Dr. Jackson and the university searching for a response. When the topic spread through the channels within the university, matters got worse. This disguised case examines the lesson, conflict, and aftermath…

Courses: Visual Rhetoric, Political Communication, Media and Society, Argumentation. Objective: Students trace a social hierarchy created through the visual reason of memes.

Even after you have decided to tackle a problem like racial equity, it may seem daunting to broach the subject in a physics classroom. After all, the idea of a (typically White) instructor in power tackling a sensitive topic such as social justice can be scary in any (mostly White) classroom. Not only that, but physics is typically viewed as a…

It is a cliché, but also a fundamental fact that we live in a world where globalization and international challenges, opportunities and relationships play an increasing role. However, how have these changing conditions affected the content of school history? To what degree have curricula and textbooks addressed these challenges? Is the main focus…

Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) in the Republic of Ireland and Local and Global Citizenship (LGC) in Northern Ireland keenly promote students' active participation in society. However, the purpose of this participation is not necessarily to encourage students to campaign for change in the present but rather that "students are…

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…

In this article, two teacher educators reflect on their experiences teaching a diversity course for preservice middle-school teachers. The first author is an African American male teacher educator, and the second author is a White female teacher educator. While the authors bring distinct experiences, backgrounds, and epistemologies to this work,…

The purpose of this study was to revisit Coombs' suggestions for teaching the crisis communication course using service-learning as a framework. The author sought to assess the effectiveness of using this method in terms of the benefits to both students and the partnering organization and students' perceptions of whether they met the learning…

Why do we teach about the Holocaust and about other genocides? The Holocaust has been a compulsory part of the English National Curriculum since 1991; however, curriculum documents say little about why pupils should learn about the Holocaust or about what they should learn. Tamsin Leyman and Richard Harris decided to use the opportunity presented…

Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides. As she reports, her aim was to not create a hierarchy of suffering or…

Social work education accreditation requires the completion of course work specifically around issues related to oppression and diversity within society. Educators offer a range of approaches to engage students in discussion about oppression and diversity from academic content and structured curriculum to reflective practice and experiential…

The use of children's literature in urban social studies classrooms to facilitate students' engagement in literate behaviors and simultaneously develop a framework for understanding social action is an under-researched area. This paper discusses the use of literature for children and young adults in an urban middle school language arts and social…

As a second article in a series devoted to an ongoing evaluation of our antiracism field project, a controversial assignment rooted in our Smith College School for Social Work's antiracism commitment, this paper focuses on the review of 128 assignments completed between September 1998-August 2000. A thematic analysis of these projects revealed…