This study explored how elementary teachers identified and adapted their personal experiences, or lack of them, to address social issues that students face in classrooms. The study involved six elementary school teachers. Using ethics of care and justice theories, the findings show that teachers use their own experiences to help them make…

The state of democracy facing expanding political division and pervasive racial and social inequalities. Discussing and deliberating controversial social and political issues functions help foster students' civic contribution. I conducted a qualitative case study and recruited 14 participants, with whom I conducted interviews, self-reflection,…

Building on sociocultural theories of literacy learning, in this article, we think at the intersection of reader response theory and multimodal literacies to examine how 13 preservice teachers in the course Teaching Social Sciences Through the Arts remediated responses to Francisco Jiménez's "The Circuit: Stories From the Life of a Migrant…

Controversial issues characterise life in democratic societies and they often arise unexpectedly in the classroom, without being planned for by the teacher. However, controversial issues are rarely addressed beyond a mandatory curriculum and are often avoided. The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate what teachers identify and address…

This study aims to examine primary and secondary education curricula in terms of controversial issues such as human rights, terrorism, sexuality, etc. determined by the participation of teachers, academicians and education union representatives beforehand. This study was designed as a document analysis which is one of the qualitative research…

Complexities of social problems in our globalised world pose new educational challenges, including how to empower citizens for active engagement with socioscientific issues. This study describes the analysis and discussion of an activist video as the first phase in an activist education programme. Participants were 104 preservice primary teachers…

This case study uncovers how controversial issues such as the recent influx of refugees and immigrants were being addressed in upper elementary classrooms on the United States (US) side of the US/Mexico border. Public school administrators and sixth-grade teachers from two school sites participated. Transborder pedagogy contextualized the findings…

Objective: Child sexual abuse is a significant health problem with potential long-term consequences for victims. Therefore, prevention and education programs are critical. This preliminary study evaluates changes in children’s knowledge of sexual abuse using a school-based train-the-trainer curriculum. Emphasis was placed on developing a…

This study systematically analyzed social and cognitive processes that underlie the development of argumentative knowledge. Group discussions of controversial issues and explicit instruction in argumentation were expected to help students acquire a sense of the overall structure of an argument, or an argument schema. In a quasi-experiment, 128…

The "International Society for the Social Studies Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. It contains the following papers: (1) Teacher Perceptions of Authentic Pedagogy: A Case Study of Professional Development in an African American High School's…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2009 proceedings, see ED504973.]