A fundamental insight that the tool wants to convey is that teaching about controversial issues entails significant risks. They can arouse antagonism and create division between students or between students and the educator. For this reason, you should reflect on whether it is worth the risk to address a controversial issue in your teaching if it isn’t necessary or justified.

It can sometimes be tempting to use controversial issues to engage students in teaching. Controversial issues are often of interest to students because they are relevant to public debate or affect students personally.

But is the reason ”it creates engagement” a good enough reason to teach about controversial issues? The engagement gained risks quickly turning into antagonism and division. Then the teaching can have a negative effect on learning. Is engagement really worth that?

It is also worth noting that teaching is carried out with specific goals in mind. Therefore, you should ask yourself what goals your teaching aims to achieve. What do you want the students to learn? And does teaching about a controversial issue help you and your students reach that goal?

Unlike the other questions in the tool, this one does not have a follow-up. It’s just a simple yes or no. And if it’s no, you shouldn’t feel compelled to teach about the controversial issue if you don’t have to.

Developing democratic competency as a goal

Although you do not have to use controversial issues to achieve the goals of your teaching, there may still be reasons to use them.

Often, an educator, program, university, or school has other goals for teaching that are not always stated in, for example, a syllabus. Sometimes these goals are statutory or written down in strategy documents. But often they go unspoken or are limited to educators’ individual goals in their teaching.

One such goal is to contribute to the students’ basic democratic competencies. This goal is often highlighted in the research literature on teaching controversial issues. For example, Diane Hess explains in Controversy in the Classroom (2009) that the ability to discuss is a basic prerequisite for a functioning democracy. The fact that everyone has the opportunity to participate in public conversations and raise their concerns means (at least a symbolic) recognition that everyone is equal in public life. Discussions on controversial issues thus offer, according to her, an opportunity for an embryo of a democratic community to form, in which students, as equals, can express varying opinions and perspectives in a tolerant and respectful environment.

Another reason why teaching about controversial issues is important is that students cannot avoid encountering controversy in their everyday lives. To better equip them for conflict-filled encounters in the future, students need to have practiced both confronting others and being confronted by others. By training themselves in this under controlled teaching methods, they can thus learn to face such confrontations peacefully in everyday life.

Some research further argues that controversial issues better equip students to contribute to social change, as they gain greater knowledge of the affairs of minorities and marginalized people, among other things. Teaching controversial issues can, therefore, contribute to a kind of moral and political awakening among students, where they are willing to fight for the rights of minorities and marginalized people.

There is empirical support for these arguments. The research indicates that those who engage with diverse perspectives on certain issues in everyday life also show greater knowledge of and greater interest in democratic values. There is an additional correlation between students who have dealt with controversial issues and higher voter turnout, participation in voluntary activities, and interest in public affairs.

Thus, it is not always obvious that teaching about controversial issues serves a goal in your teaching. However, there may still be reasons to use them in your teaching, especially since they have the potential to develop your students’ democratic competencies.

References

Berg, Wolfgang, Leena Graeffe, & Cathie Holden. Teaching Controversial Issues: A European Perspective. CiCe Guidelines 1. London CiCE Central Coordination Unit, 2003.

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. Hardpress Publishing, 2013.

Feldman, Lauren, Josh Pasek, Daniel Romer, & Kathleen Hall Jamieson. ”Identifying Best Practices in Civic Education: Lessons from the Student Voices Program”. American Journal of Education 114, 1 (November 2007): 75–100. https://doi.org/10.1086/520692.

Fraser, Nancy. ”Politics, culture, and the public sphere: Toward a postmodern conception”. In Social postmodernism: Beyond identity politics, edited by Linda J. Nicholson och Steven Seidman, 287–312. Cambridge cultural social studies. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Graseck, Susan. ”Teaching with controversy”. Educational Leadership September 1 (2009): 45–49.

Hahn, Carole L. ”Citizenship education: An empirical study of policy, practices and outcomes”. Oxford Review of Education 25, 1/2 (1999): 231–50.

Hess, Diana E. Controversy in the classroom: The democratic power of discussion. The critical social thought series. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Hess, Diana E., & Paula McAvoy. The political classroom: Evidence and ethics in democratic education. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Hess, Diana E., & Julie Posselt. ”How high school students experience and learn from discussion of controversial public issues”. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 17, 4 (2002): 283–314.

Kahne, Joseph, David Crow, & Nam-Jin Lee. ”Different Pedagogy, Different Politics: High School Learning Opportunities and Youth Political Engagement”. Political Psychology 34, 3 (juni 2013): 419–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00936.x.

Kauppi, Veli-Mikko, & Johannes Drerup. ”Discussion and Inquiry: A Deweyan Perspective on Teaching Controversial Issues”. Theory and Research in Education 19, 3 (November 2021): 213–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/14778785211052199.

McDevitt, Michael, & Spiro Kiousis. ”Deliberative Learning: An Evaluative Approach to Interactive Civic Education”. Communication Education 55, 3 (01 juli 2006): 247–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520600748557.

Misco, Thomas. ”The importance of context for teaching controversial issues in international settings”. International Education 42, 1 (Fall 2012): 69–84.

Mitchell, Theodore R. ”The high court and Hazelwood: Chipping away at rights”. The Christian Science Monitor, 25 January 1988.

Mutz, Diana C. Hearing the other side: Deliberative versus participatory democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617201.

Oxfam Education. Teaching controversial issues: A guide for teachers. Oxfam Digital Repository, 2018. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620473/gd-teaching-controversial-issues-290418-en.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Papamichael, Elena, Mary Gannon, Bojka Djukanovic, Rosa Garvín Fernández, David Kerr, & Ted Huddleston. Living with Controversy: Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights: Training pack for teachers. Strasburg: Council of Europe, 2015.

Other

If you feel that this tool was helpful, please share it with your colleagues and others who could potentially use it.

For questions and comments, please contact Fredrik Portin, Malmö University (fredrik.portin@mau.se).