Dealing with controversial issues is one of the most important tasks teachers perform. In this article, the author presents a few core concepts and research findings that are essential for understanding what teaching controversial issues is all about and why it is so important to develop capability in this methodology.

This short review examines Chapter 5 of Sarah M. Stitzlein's "Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens," concentrating on "The Role of Honesty in Teaching About Controversial Issues." Emphasizing what I call "zetetic avoidance creep" (ZAC), the review explores how teachers may…

How should educators deal with conspiracy theories in the classroom, if at all? Do the epistemic deficiencies of some conspiracy theories make them easy prey for debunking? Can the moral and political dangers that certain conspiracy theories pose to democratic societies justify educators avoiding addressing conspiracy theories in the classroom?…

The higher education learning environment has always been an ideological battleground. We must collectively interrogate how we holistically construct an educational learning environment that is reflective of our values.

College and university classrooms, curricula, and credentials have always been an ideological battleground of clashing values and perspectives that shift the answers to the question of what the learning environment should be. A crucible moment of legislative attacks on diversity initiatives, congressional interventions into university leadership,…

What should U.S. schools teach about U.S. actions abroad when students in the classroom have varied or conflicting memories, ideas, and experiences? Should schools teach the dominant narrative of U.S. benevolence and innocence in world affairs so as to instill patriotism in children? What kind of patriotism are we concerned with here? Or should…

This paper examines the contribution that Martin Thrupp made to educational policy and teachers' practice in the light of the present threat to democracy presented by the authoritarian right. Martin's work on school composition is extended to an analysis of the prospects and practice for a education for democratic citizenship. It focuses on the…

Drawing on a raciolinguistic perspective and theoretical constructs of critical consciousness, this study examines Chinese dual language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers' lived experiences and the raciolinguistic ideologies shaping their perceived language and literacy pedagogy in the classroom. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10…

This paper has two main purposes. The first, more informational, is to introduce, re-introduce, the German-Nordic concept of "Bildung" to Canadian environmental education. This includes a brief attempt to define, a short overview of its history which stretches back to the Eighteenth century at least, and then an exploration of why and…

Politically neutral pedagogy is often the subject of both praise and condemnation. But treating political neutrality as a principle to be either embraced or rejected confuses the issue, because the permissibility of neutrality actually varies across educational contexts. Educational practice should not be evaluated on the basis of whether or not…

This study examines teachers' beliefs about Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the U.S. educational system. Given the controversy surrounding CRT, understanding these beliefs is crucial for informing professional development, curriculum design, and instructional strategies. The study employed an online survey to assess over sixty U.S. preservice and…

This article reflects experiences of two racialized professors from a Critical Race Theory (CRT) paradigm teaching in Canadian teacher preparation and educational leadership programs across multiple universities. The analysis of their lived experiences as counter-stories through storytelling focuses on how their identities, bodies, course content,…

Purpose: From book challenges to anti-critical race theory and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning legislation, US English teachers have been on the receiving end of a considerable amount of far-right conservative pushback. This study aims to explore the effects of conservative pushback on individual English teachers…

In Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most fundamental political and moral issue current and future citizens face. If we accept the maxim that schools should prepare citizens for participation in determining the future of their state, Israeli students must be introduced to the historical, political and moral questions at the heart of…

In 2014, a US college created a policy requiring faculty to provide trigger warnings for students. This spurred a heated debate across North America regarding the need for and efficacy of trigger warnings in classes. A content analysis of comment responses (over 1500) to 20 articles on the topic of trigger warnings from two higher education news…