This article provides an introduction to randomized response polling, a technique which was designed to allow for questioning on sensitive issues while protecting the respondent's privacy and avoiding social desirability bias. It is described in terms that are suitable for presentation and use in any classroom environment. Instructions for plain…

In this article, we provide an overview of the overturning of Roe v. Wade and consider its implications for communication classrooms in higher education. We assert that we as communication educators have a moral imperative to consider the role of intersectionality and reproductive justice in our teaching philosophies and implementation, and to do…

Teaching literacy skills through high-quality trade books that provide diverse cultural perspectives is increasingly difficult due to challenges to teachers' book selections. To meet their professional responsibilities, teachers must select literature they judge effective for developing students' awareness and understanding of others'…

Around the western world various activist groups confront controversial monuments and other mnemonic infrastructures of historical culture representing contested histories and equally contested visions of the future. This article presents an original model for analyzing controversial issues of commemoration in the context of history education.…

Building on the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) developed by Kathy Swan, John Lee, and S.G. Grant as an instructional articulation of the C3 Framework, Ryan Crowley and LaGarrett King suggest that teachers engage in a critical inquiry when addressing injustices. They recommend teachers accomplish this by designing inquiries that question systems of…

Scholars have analyzed debates about controversial faculty speech inside and outside of the classroom, but none have paid close attention to the facet of academic freedom related to professors' decisions about daily teaching methods. This omission, along with obstacles to enacting pedagogical norms, has caused the scholarly community to overlook…

Until the beginning of the 21st century, the Tulsa Race Massacre was omitted mainly from the social studies curriculum and state-mandated standards in the United States. However, the featured lesson provides a valuable springboard to explore the historical perspectives and injustices against the Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 31, 1921.…

Most of the history education research that addresses controversial issues suggests that disputes arising in the history classroom are rooted in students' diverse identities that relate differently to history. Therefore, a history education that wants to ease tensions must try both to make these different identities and their relations to history…

The authors provide an overview of teaching war and explore ways to situate these notions in the elementary classroom. As part of this discussion, they offer a guide for selecting appropriate texts for a thematic text set for children involving issues of war and peace.

This article describes the process taken by members of a seminar course on radical geography in a primarily quantitative geography department. This course was taught during tumultuous times necessitating the need to explore radical topics and abstract conceptualizations of space and place. We offer our experiences and lessons learned while…

Despite the scientific consensus, climate change continues to be socially and politically controversial. Consequently, teachers may worry about accusations of political indoctrination if they teach climate change in their classrooms. Research shows that many teachers are using the 'teaching the controversy' approach to teach climate change,…

Recent legislation in Tennessee regarding "divisive concepts" in secondary education negatively impacts teachers. It causes them to question previously taught content for fear that parents or administrators might deem it too controversial, which could put educators' jobs in jeopardy. Secondary educators used various approaches when…

The author reflects upon how her field of African American history is in the crosshairs of this most recent battle of the nation's culture war. Once maybe regarded as a niche or narrow area of history (although it is not), African American history has become one of many targets of legislative and activist efforts to end the teaching of honest,…

College and university classrooms, curricula, and credentials have always been an ideological battleground of clashing values and perspectives that shift the answers to the question of what the learning environment should be. A crucible moment of legislative attacks on diversity initiatives, congressional interventions into university leadership,…

This essay elaborates on the notion of risk in relation to democratically challenging situations in education. This refers to situations in which liberal democratic values are potentially challenged, such as in teaching about controversial issues and in moments of expressions of hurtful speech, which can create in teachers an ambivalence for how…