Dialogic talk affords students opportunities to share ideas and co-construct knowledge while developing various literacy skills such as perspective taking, text comprehension, and argumentative reasoning. In this study, we examine how seventh- and eighth-grade students in four classrooms discuss a controversial topic about changing a National…

Sexual health education in the United States is seeing increased attention and is often viewed as a controversial topic. To better understand young adolescents' experiences within an LGBTQ+ inclusive sexual health education program ("Get Real"), we utilized Situated Expectancy-Value Theory to investigate 53 responses from 30 students…

Teaching critically about politically charged topics in an affluent, suburban middle school requires a careful approach. Grounded in critical pedagogy theory and historical literacy pedagogy, the inquiry-based project described in this article is an attempt to help seventh-grade students analyze and understand the historic and modern conflict…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of students' prior attitude on the processing of conflicting information regarding a controversial issue (is eating organic better for health and the environment?). In study 1, 314 seventh graders watched a set of videos that provided conflicting arguments on the issue. Students were then…

Determined to do justice to the complexity of the seventeenth century, as a messy but crucial period in British history, and to develop their pupils' disciplinary understanding of how and why interpretations of the past are constructed, Dan Keates and his department set out to exploit the rich seam of interpretations of Cromwell. The quest to…

Human rights are necessary and compulsory for all people irrespective of language, religion, race, gender or sect. Learning about these rights begins within family and continues in school formally. Human rights education is necessary for values of human rights to pass from theory to practice. The rights given to people or groups with certain…

As the school National Science Curriculum in Turkey includes topics such as human reproduction, hormonal growth and adolescent health, elementary school science teachers (ESTs) are required to teach sexuality-related topics to their students. However, studies have shown that teachers in Turkey, like their counterparts in many other countries, have…

The aim of this study was to determine middle school 7th grade students' opinions on controversial issues. In the research, screening model and quantitative research method has been used. The sample of the study consists of 7th graders from 5 public schools located on the center of Demirci district of Manisa province. The 5-point Likert-type…

This study is about a seventh-grade classroom in a predominantly White region in the rural northwestern United States where a White teacher led an interdisciplinary unit on African American narratives of enslavement and freedom fighting. Through the lenses of racial literacy, critical Whiteness studies, and discourse studies, authors use data from…

In this study, we explored the potential of two forms of discussion (disciplinary vs. traditional) for 39 sixth- and seventh-grade students with or at-risk for LD, before writing historical arguments. Nine teachers who led small group discussions in six heterogeneous social studies classrooms implemented the intervention. Students who were…

Scientists regularly evaluate alternative explanations of phenomena and solutions to problems. Students should similarly engage in critical evaluation when learning about scientific and engineering topics. However, students do not often demonstrate sophisticated evaluation skills in the classroom. The purpose of the present study was to…

In this experimental study, 151 middle school students explored 3 historical controversies, first reading and discussing primary source documents in groups, then writing arguments on their own. Students were either randomly assigned to an experimental condition, using argumentative schemes and critical questions as guides during discussions, or to…

Over the past two decades, sexual citizenship has emerged as a new form of citizenship coupled with increased interest in the challenges to citizenship and social justice faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people and, in particular, by sexual minority youth within education systems. In South Africa, the rights of…

There is a growing consensus that simply learning enough science to decipher public debates on socioscientific issues will not make citizens better equipped to handle the complex and ill-structured problems these controversial issues present. This study highlights the interaction and complex interplay between youth authored and appropriated frames…

This article investigates how affluent students made sense of social justice issues that were embedded in mathematics learning activities. I present 2 case studies of such activities at the intermediate and secondary levels in 2 different schools. The analysis draws on video records and classroom artifacts and applies the theoretical framework of…