This study explores the practical implications of the paradox of moral education, focusing on how Swedish social study teachers (civics, geography, history, and religious education) navigate conflicting responsibilities to convey values and facilitate critical thinking when addressing controversial issues in their classrooms. Through qualitative…

Environmental and sustainability education cannot disconnect itself from politics. In order to achieve sustainable societies, we need approaches that educate students capable of coping with the political complexities of environmental issues in a civic environmental context. This study proposes a pluralistic environmental citizenship approach based…

Policy makers increasingly call on higher education to prepare learners for challenges such as global health emergencies or ecological crises. These can be understood as 'wicked problems', which are unbounded, complex and resist simplistic definition. Wicked problems involve stakeholders with incompatible value positions and attempted solutions…

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 determine the role of worldview perspective on science students' decision-making process by a socio-scientific issue-based instruction through an integrated Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. Understanding the decision-making process in complex themed learning is one of the most important…

This article reports the findings of a web-based survey of Ontario health and physical education teachers conducted in 2017. The purpose of the study was to understand teachers' views of the aims of the 2015 revised "sex ed" curriculum and the public debate that surrounded it, as well as to explore their own values around the teaching of…

In light of societal pluralism, diverse visions exist for social justice. In this sense, uncertainty is a marker of social justice education and research. This article shares insights into how we came to ask a question about teaching for social justice through cross-cultural collaborative self-study. Eight New Zealand pre-service teachers…

Using an analytical framework based on the concept of historical distance, this article explores how Dutch history teachers and educators navigate between the past and the present when making curriculum decisions on the sensitive topic of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery. Four history teachers and 2 museum educators were selected on the…

This qualitative study examines what four pre-service and six practicing geography educators in Singapore schools believe to be the purpose of climate change education, and how this intersects with their beliefs about student readiness to handle controversy within climate change education. A key finding of this study indicates that the teachers'…

This research focuses on the use of ethical frameworks as a pedagogical model for socio-scientific education in implementing the "Science as a Human Endeavour" (SHE) strand of the Australian Curriculum: Science in a Year 10 biology class in a Christian college in metropolitan Perth, Western Australia. Using a case study approach, a mixed…

The realisation to integrate science, ethics and morality is recognised with growing impetus in recent years (as noted with introducing the Australian Curriculum "Science as a Human Endeavour" strand), to develop sophisticated epistemologies of science, which includes an appreciation of the social context including ethical thinking. To…

Approximately four months ago the author was sitting at his desk at the Air Force Academy preparing a course in leadership that he would be teaching during the fall semester. Then, something happened that would have a drastic impact on his professional life as an educator and a military officer. He was informed that he would be deploying to Kabul,…

The current study examines the implications of literary teaching material in a national diversified society in which the governmental educational policy separates between two national educational systems, and controls both of these separate systems. We set out to examine whether, in such realty, teachers are willing to teach texts, not formally…

Geography as a school subject is highly infused with values and controversial issues. Much attention has been paid to the role of the (geography) teacher in dealing with values education, but the continued lack of pupil-focused empirical work hampers conceptual, practical and policy development. Drawing on evidence from pupil-focused research, it…

In this article, we study third-year university students' reasoning about three controversial socio-scientific issues from the viewpoint of education for sustainable development: local issues (the reintroduction of bears in the Pyrenees in France, wolves in the Mercantour) and a global one (global warming). We used the theoretical frameworks of…