Despite its importance for students' learning, engaging students in dialogic discussions, especially about controversial, justice-oriented topics, can be difficult for U.S. teachers to enact due to current political constraints. In this study, we explore how three middle school teachers engaged their students in curriculum-embedded discussions on…

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…

Many teachers and education scholars are quick to endorse discussing controversial issues in classrooms, especially in the context of "divisive concept" legislation that proposes bans or limitations on how contentious matters are taught in schools. This approach, however, may not be the best choice in a post-truth and populist setting…

Most courses are taught almost exclusively using lecture and, despite gaps in textbook coverage of empirical economics, do not incorporate academic readings. The authors of this article present a "jigsaw literature review" cooperative learning activity to address these shortfalls. The jigsaw guides students through formulating a position…

In Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most fundamental political and moral issue current and future citizens face. If we accept the maxim that schools should prepare citizens for participation in determining the future of their state, Israeli students must be introduced to the historical, political and moral questions at the heart of…

It is often asserted that to facilitate student engagement, encourage participation and create optimal learning environments, the classroom should be a safe space. In this paper, we explore the idea that 'safety' is at odds with the very nature of academic enquiry. Using data from a qualitative study with staff at a UK University, we illustrate…

Determined to do justice to the complexity of the seventeenth century, as a messy but crucial period in British history, and to develop their pupils' disciplinary understanding of how and why interpretations of the past are constructed, Dan Keates and his department set out to exploit the rich seam of interpretations of Cromwell. The quest to…

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) has risen up the global advocacy agenda and is recognized as an important child-safeguarding issue. The topic crystallizes key debates in my module, "Culture and Development in Africa," and enables Geography undergraduates to explore complex intersections of childhood, gender, sexuality, and…

Teaching race and ethnicity in various sociology courses, we found students in our classes can be very reluctant to approach the subject of race, discrimination, and racism. Moreover, during class discussion, they often have a hard time defining and analyzing these concepts. In this study, we examine how popular culture can be a useful tool to…

Current political and social climates have pushed conversations about equity and inclusion to the forefront. At the same time, lawmakers in more than half of US states are pushing legislation that would limit discussion of these issues in schools. Educators must consider the best ways to continue conversations of equity and inclusion without…

We present a sequence of professional development sessions to support science teachers in designing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) lessons to foster democratic citizenship. We focus on seven stages for enacting SSIBL: (1) introducing a dilemma; (2) initial opinion-forming; (3) creating a 'need to know'; (4) inquiry; (5) dialogue;…

From 2012 to 2016, American news headlines were dominated at various times by the killing of black men either stopped by police or presumed to be engaging in suspicious activity, and protests that spread through the Internet social media hashtag #blacklivesmatter. In this piece, the author revisits his time in teaching at an historically black…

In this small scale study in higher education, a good educational practice on the teaching of Bioethics based on transformative learning and accomplished by debates is presented. The research was carried out in June 2016 at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece and it includes the assessment of…

Purpose: This paper aims to consider how students and teachers engaged in political work in their design and enactment of critical literacy workshops in one US elementary school facing pressures of accountability and standardization. Design/methodology/approach: As a collaborative team of university researchers and classroom teachers, the authors…

The nature of IS technologies and the range of their appropriate and inappropriate uses continue to evolve and expand. MIS educational programs have a challenge to provide both the appropriate content to introduce students to classic information ethics problems, as well as the methods for analyzing possible actions within a complex realistic…