As a science teacher and youth minister from a predominantly white evangelical community in rural Appalachia, I have had many opportunities to teach the science of global warming to climate change deniers. In this manuscript, I share some of the lessons I have learned to make my presentations less contentious and help those I teach be more…

This article examines uniform standardized history education in Russia. It focuses primarily on the process of designing unified national history textbooks in 2013-2017, and also examines the educational reform that followed this process, along with the role of Russian society in the formulation of the textbook's content. The new…

A founding purpose of public education is to adequately prepare children for thoughtful self-government, citizenship, and independent adult life. This end is served by having educators teach students not what to think about controversial or contested public matters but how to think such issues through. When educators fail in this essential duty,…

This research study contributes to understanding teachers' perceptions and views of using controversial issues and political neutrality in teaching, through an analysis of data gathered through questionnaire responses in a wider project and 41 semi-structured interviews. There are diversified views about the relationship between controversial…

Turkey is the only country that has twice lost cases concerning the violation of parents' freedom to ensure their children an education in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This article firstly seeks to present these court cases. It then moves to the official responses…

Unearthing the perspectives students bring with them in their college-level education coursework is especially important as education instructors are tasked with interrupting the unexamined proliferation of dominant ideologies among future educational professionals. The introduction to education course serves as an important site for this…

Statutory requirements for compulsory Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) in the UK is generating concern among many religious communities and reigniting debates about the purpose of School Based Sexuality Education (SBSE). Among the communities voicing their dissent are members of the British Islamic community. Quranic scripture deems…

Since the publication of the first edition of "Understanding Academic Freedom," the never-ending struggle to defend academic freedom has entered a demonstrably new phase. Legislation determining what can and cannot be taught in schools in Florida, Texas, and other states has intensified governing board activism that impinges on widely…

School boards have become ground zero for America's education culture wars, with fiery debates over race, gender, curriculum, and pandemic policies making national headlines. But beyond the noise, how well do these elected bodies actually represent their communities? To find out, political scientists David Houston and Michael Hartney conducted the…

This collaborative, descriptive research project in urban Texas looked at the at the development, implementation, and student perception of effectiveness of a multi-stage pedagogical intervention in a classroom to help preservice teachers become more confident during discussions of controversial identity issues; specifically, ableism, classism,…

South Africa is characterised by persisting social inequalities, a vibrant civil society and one of the highest Internet penetrations on the African Continent. As in other parts of the World, digital media promised to revolutionise politics by giving a "voice to the voiceless", i.e., creating a space for silenced and marginalised…

Recent years have witnessed growing acceptance of gender and sexuality diversity in Australia; yet, its inclusion in the school curriculum remains contentious. Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a commonly held belief that parents consider the inclusion of such topics inappropriate. In the light of this, this paper focuses on an analysis…

This much-needed guide provides the specific skills and materials necessary to facilitate effective dialogues across identity differences. We are living through arguably one of the most divisive times in our country and the world. People do not know how to communicate across differences in a way that advances the public good--from the…

The issue of parental control over public school curricula has been a longstanding concern, with courts generally limiting the extent of parental influence. While the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes parents' right to choose educational settings, it has not granted them the authority to dictate public school curricula or demand exemptions. Lower…

Visualizations may help students understand the network of connections among multiple documents. This study explored how ninth-grade students used a novel digital document mapping scaffold to construct models of multiple documents. We examined students' maps and mapping processes in order to understand how they used the scaffold to visually…