Informed scientific thinking is a vital component of engaging all socioscientific issues (SSI) such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, socioscientific engagement may be influenced by sociocultural factors and mis/disinformation efforts to the widespread detriment of human and environmental well-being. The purpose of this…

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…

The goal of this research is to gain an understanding of how Arab civics teachers in Israel teach material that is inconsistent with their beliefs and aspirations. To this end, I conducted qualitative research employing interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings show that different teachers find different ways to deal with the…

The public debate regarding problematic ideas and personal autonomy has cascaded into classrooms over the last two years, as families and politicians demand more control over what youth are learning. One approach to limiting exposure to perceived harmful or controversial content has been to remove it completely. In this paper, the authors present…

In a polarized society, it is a university's responsibility to offer courses that explore highly controversial issues. Traditional forms of debate may create barriers to knowledge and entrenchment of perspectives, with students self-limiting their ability to develop informed opinions. We describe an active learning, double-blinded approach to…

Since its inception, schools' primary function has been to educate youth and adolescents to encourage a prosperous society. Educational institutions serve as an immediate community where leaders foster and nurture principles of standard behavior. The notion of these practices served as the framework for academic institutions and complemented…

Using as a case study the experience of teaching Jane DeLynn's "Leash" (2002), a "pornosophical" novel about a sadomasochistic lesbian relationship, I argue in this essay for the pedagogical value of shock. I argue that shocking works of pornography can unsettle not only students' comfortable understandings of sexuality, but…

Given prior work identifying sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization as key strategies needed to learn from multiple texts, this study examines students' multiple text processing and written response composition under three different heuristic conditions. In particular, students were asked to engage in sourcing, corroboration, or…

This practical book addresses the consistent questions that were posed by secondary social studies teachers during professional learning sessions. In particular, it examines ways to break through the inclination and perception expressed by many teachers that "my kids cannot do that." Drawing on 22 years as a high school history teacher,…

Is it ethical to want students to become non-queerphobic as an outcome of our teaching? This question is situated within thinking about teaching for social justice. It takes an event where a student challenges a course's queer pedagogy and thinks with it to expose 'the inherent paradox of education'. This is the notion that in its desires for…

In this study, we investigate how a third-grade teacher enacted controversial issues discussion about the use of Indigenous people as sports mascots. We highlight how the teacher supported eight students' sensemaking about the issue during small-group instruction. We provide suggestions for controversial issues teaching in elementary social…

In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed House Bill 233. The bill has three provisions: 1) it mandates an "intellectual viewpoint diversity" survey that asks students, faculty, and other employees at Florida's public colleges and universities to report on their levels of comfort to express their ideological and political opinions; 2) it…

This article explores the potential of narrative interest for secondary literature education. Narrative is a purposeful construction which is organised with the intent of having effects on readers. For rhetorical narratologists, narrative is driven by the production of narrative gaps -- suspense, curiosity, and surprise -- which in turn drive…

Dealing with controversy is highlighted in policy documents as a cornerstone of democracy and education. However, previous research points to several challenges for teachers when dealing with controversial issues (CI) in class. In this article, we apply an ecological conceptualisation of teacher agency and explore the ways in which forum theatre…

Evolutionary theory is fundamental to biology, yet evolution instruction in high schools has often been unsatisfactory. How or whether high school biology teachers teach evolution is influenced by their own acceptance or rejection of evolutionary theory, parents' and community members' views, and in the case of some private schools, their…