In this essay, we reflect on our experience teaching divisive issues to undergraduates in a required business ethics class. We want to share lessons learned, and what worked and what did not, in hopes that it will help other instructors who are tackling these topics. In particular, we share a list of "guiding principles" we developed…

This essay advocates the use of "unresolved" speech assignments in introductory public speaking instruction. Unresolved speeches work to decenter persuasion in the speech class by asking students to critically explore the landscape of arguments surrounding controversial topics and issue questions without making the turn to opinion giving…

When it comes to creationism, it might seem as if the United States is trapped in a century-long culture-war rut. In a sense, the Scopes Trial of 1925 put science itself on trial, and it can seem as if every new dispute over teaching evolution is only a repetition of that famous trial. In truth, however, the power of creationism has ebbed…

I position the use of counter-narratives as a critical approach that grants students agency and meaning in their learning and provides teachers with opportunities to present silenced curricular narratives as relevant and necessary in a globalized setting such as North America. Counter-narratives focus on a subject that preserves colonial and…

This article reports on research in three secondary schools in England where students were engaged in deliberative discussion of controversial issues. The teaching resources used illustrated rights-based dilemmas and the data analysis focused on the nature of the talk and the types of knowledge the students drew upon to inform their discussions.…

As ethical issues involving computer technologies and social media become more common, there is increasing interest in what role ethics should play in computer science education. As a result, computer science departments worldwide have ramped up their efforts to examine relevant ethical issues in undergraduate computer science classes to prepare…

In 2005, Kitson and McCully introduced the 'risk-taking' continuum, representing the multiple ways in which teachers in post-conflict societies deal with the history of conflict in the classroom. 'Avoiders', at one extreme, refrain from teaching the violent past, while at the other extreme 'risk-takers' analyse multiple perspectives on what…

A well-written argumentative essay requires a thorough analysis of the topic with sufficient supporting evidence. However, obtaining information on the topic, summarizing the reading materials, and then presenting them in the form of an argumentative essay can be a challenging task, especially for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners.…

In a highly polarized political environment, political discourse on divisive topics is all the more important. Heeding the many calls for higher education to teach political discourse skills, this study investigates the impact of political discourse lessons in a college-level, political science classroom. Further, it explores the effectiveness of…

Forty-four states have recently taken formal policy steps to limit how teachers can teach about so-called "divisive issues." This paper examines teachers' perceptions of what they need to be prepared to teach in states where "divisive issues" legislation exists. Teacher interview data where restrictive legislation exists were…

This study explores social studies teachers' self-reported instruction about teaching the 2020 election in U.S. secondary schools. We analyzed survey responses from 1,723 secondary social studies teachers from 12 states (3 left-leaning, 3 right-leaning, 6 battleground) collected in the weeks after the election, examining self-reported pedagogies,…

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…

A number of geographical concepts are examined under the rubric of race and racism in Australia. The first section looks at postcolonial perspectives on race and racism and the interconnection between whiteness and European colonisation. The second section, that relies largely on the work of Australian university geographers, is premised on the…

The marginalization of social studies has led to many questions about how elementary teachers include social studies in their curriculum. Using a survey distributed to Texas teachers, this study explores the instructional strategies, integration emphasis, and content area instructional time utilized in the elementary classroom. Through a…

We are surrounded by controversy--politics, religion, diets, and even science are all up for debate in our 24/7 world of social media and the internet. With this controversy comes a lot of misinformation and competition with what our students might otherwise be learning in our classrooms. I know this intimately, since I teach fitness and nutrition…