This case study aims to expand our understanding of controversial issues teaching and teacher disclosure by illustrating how one "out" gay/queer high school teacher approaches and experiences disclosure with the National Day of Silence (DoS), a yearly event focused on increasing awareness of LGBTQ voices and concerns in schools. Using…

This study investigated an approach to teaching students to evaluate online information in the context of a high school history class. Over the course of a semester, I collaborated with a teacher to teach and refine a series of eight lessons focused on "civic online reasoning." We aimed to use students' historical reading as a bridge to…

Friction in the classroom may create useful tension for teachers when they attempt to discuss sensitive topics as part of democratic learning. Due to the openness and indeterminacy of these topics, students can experience what it is like to be (political) subjects in a diverse society and become aware of other people's subjectness in a charged…

Growing polarization in European societies has changed not only political landscapes but also public debates about the past, which has, in turn, had an impact on the way history is taught and talked about in schools. This article explores how these trends are experienced by history educators across Europe and asks which issues history educators…

This study examines teachers' justifications for addressing unplanned controversial issues in the classroom. It builds on the premise that controversial issues arise unexpectedly in the classroom context and that some teachers actively choose to address such issues rather than avoid them. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with…

Quality civic education is often understood as involving discussions of controversial social and political issues, a task made more difficult for teachers amidst the kind of political polarization that characterizes the current political climate. This study explores high school social studies teachers' thinking and sensemaking related to…

We conducted a two-year study with four teachers (two mentors and two mentees), one university researcher, and a political science professor focused on improving discussion facilitation. This article examines the facilitation of a collaboratively developed seminar/deliberation discussion by four teachers and the relationship between their…

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…

In this article, we discuss three ways that emotional content was presented, registered, performed, and communicated in a secondary social studies classroom discussion. In an analysis of a classroom discussion about representative democracy, we focus on the articulated and embodied emotional and affective content that manifested in students'…

Currently, a knowledge gap exists at the intersection of immigration, citizenship, and education. We have little knowledge of how teachers teach about citizenship when they anticipate that some of their students are undocumented. Conceptually, we distinguish between formal and cultural citizenship and draw from immigrant political incorporation…

This article explores the relationship between the philosophy of ethics, history education, and young people's historical ethical judgments. In the last two decades, "ethical judgments," which focus on making decisions about the ethics of historical actions, has been acknowledged as a second-order historical thinking concept in history…

Based on a cross-national study conducted in Northern Ireland, England, and the United States, this article expands current literature by examining 4 teacher educators' efforts to prepare preservice teachers to teach controversial issues. Teaching controversial issues, strongly advocated for decades, is both urgent and risky, especially in divided…

Extant conceptions of patriotism in social studies curricula are centered upon blind allegiance to the state or a belief in ideals of a liberal democracy. Yet these conceptions fail to account for the complex racial experiences that mediate citizenship and civic action, especially for Black persons. In this article, we advance a theory of Black…

Using an analytical framework based on the concept of historical distance, this article explores how Dutch history teachers and educators navigate between the past and the present when making curriculum decisions on the sensitive topic of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery. Four history teachers and 2 museum educators were selected on the…

Feminist practices can provide firm theoretical grounding for the kind of social studies that scholars promote, especially in relation to efforts to include women in the curriculum. However, in P-12 social studies education, neither women nor feminism receive much attention. The study described in this article was a discourse analysis of 16…