In practice, in the classroom, teachers are still faced with the issue of what to say to children if they believe that evolution conflicts with their own or other people's religious faith. When asked how they plan to respond, most teacher trainees and teachers respond that they will be a neutral chair and try to give children a balanced view.…

Socio-scientific issues, which are often controversial, involve the use of science and are of interest to society, raising ethical and moral dilemmas. Examples of these issues could include genetic technology or air pollution. Following a curriculum reform in England in 2006, socioscientific issues now have a heightened presence in the 14-16…

A class assignment administered by the author in her Research Methods in Education class resulted in the question of whether there is any sort of pedagogical advantage to introducing social justice issues as if you aren't really intending to teach students about them. This article describes an investigation of the author's teaching experience in…

Although most teachers realize the potential of using popular culture within the sexuality education classroom, incorporating it successfully is complex. Especially, how can teachers critically analyse the ideology contained in popular culture without lapsing into moralizing and design motivating activities? For teachers in Taiwan, whose training…

There have been many revolutions in the past 500 years but none quite so sustained and "society changing" as the march of secularisation and the move from a theocentric perspective to a scientific world view. The age of scientific discovery has led to the scientific method--put simply, evidence that can be sustained by rigorous…

This research is situated in second-wave White Teacher Identity studies and investigates the ways context structures a high school English teacher's white identity, practices, and race-consciousness. Working with detailed data and vignettes from a single case study, the author highlights the teaching of a unit on the Holocaust. Using the required…

Data visualizations are now commonplace in the public media. The ability to interpret and create such visualizations, as a form of data literacy, is increasingly important for democratic participation. Yet, the cross-disciplinary knowledge and skills needed to produce and use data visualizations and to develop data literacy are not fluidly…

Discussion is widely held to be the pedagogical approach most appropriate to the exploration of controversial issues in the classroom, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the questions of why it is the preferred approach and how best to facilitate it. Here we address ourselves to both questions. We begin by clarifying the concept…

Teachers may face considerable challenges when implementing socio-scientific issues (SSI) in their classroom practices, such as incorporating student-centred teaching practices and exploring knowledge and values in the context of socioscientific issues. This year-long study explores teachers' reflections on the process of developing their…

Purpose: This paper aims to report on findings from the first phase of a longitudinal study of undergraduate business students' attitudes, beliefs and perceptions concerning sustainability issues. Design/methodology/approach: To improve understanding of the potential effects of changes in the curriculum, business students enrolled during the…

This article discusses improvements in education and modern teacher's gender training in terms of a competence-based approach as a basic strategy of general and vocational education development in Russia. The article substantiates the relevance of teachers' gender training and the necessity to use the gender approach in their professional…

Rarely do White, middle-class Americans, the population from which most teachers are drawn, have the opportunity to consider themselves as racialized beings. Although personal experience is usually the best teacher, our increasingly homogeneous teaching population oftentimes lacks experience with diversity, and schools of education often struggle…

Conversations about race can be confusing, contentious, and frightening, particularly for White people. Even just asking questions about race can be scary, because we are afraid of what our questions might reveal about our ignorance or bias. "Raising Race Questions" invites teachers to use inquiry as a way to develop sustained engagement…

Despite the pressures on education and educators today -- seemingly from all sides -- science teachers provide critically important opportunities for students to develop the scientific knowledge and skills they will need as adults. This preparation empowers them to make well-informed decisions as citizens, as well as to use this knowledge as a…

Teaching about homosexuality, especially in a positive light, has long been held to be a controversial issue. There is, however, a view of the capacity for reason that finds that those who deem homosexuality to be controversial will ultimately contradict themselves, becoming unreasonable. By this standard of reason, homosexuality should be treated…