Contained risk-taking: Preparing preservice teachers to teach controversial issues in three countries

ABSTRACT

Based on a cross-national study conducted in Northern Ireland, England, and the United States, this article expands current literature by examining 4 teacher educators’ efforts to prepare preservice teachers to teach controversial issues. Teaching controversial issues, strongly advocated for decades, is both urgent and risky, especially in divided societies. The risks include emotional reactions that interfere with learning, inflammatory discourse threatening to students, and criticism from community members or school administrators. Using vignettes from class sessions and interview data, this article highlights strategies teacher educators taught their students to deal with these risks, as well as the approaches they used to teach them. Overall, the teacher educators prepared preservice teachers for contained risk-taking when teaching controversial issues, and they enacted this stance in their own practice. The findings raise important questions, such as what balance should be struck between an open classroom climate and safe space in politically turbulent times and divided societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-national research
• democracy education
• teacher education
• teaching controversial issues

Acknowledgments

I am enormously grateful to my research participants for their generous hospitality and the profound learning opportunities they gave me. Thanks to Diana Hess, Keith Barton, Joe Kahne, Carole Hahn, Jennifer Hauver, Monisha Bajaj, Brett Levy, Terrie Epstein, and Walter Parker for their support during the research design process.

Notes

1. A third research question is addressed in Pace (in press): How do preservice teachers respond to and take up their preparation for teaching controversial issues?

2. Institutional structures and education policy also are important factors, but discussion of them remains outside the scope of this article.

3. Northern Ireland is officially part of the United Kingdom, but national identity there is itself a controversial issue, as Nationalists identify with the Republic of Ireland (and call their country the North of Ireland) and Unionists identify with Britain.

4. I have used pseudonyms for all identifying information.

5. Mark’s preparation for teaching controversial issues in his Citizenship course is described in Pace (in press).

6. In a previous publication (Pace, 2017), an error was made regarding the religious affiliation of Tony’s school.

7. LOL is an acronym commonly used in texting and social media by young people to mean “laughing out loud.”

8. Commentary on Ian’s use of the Browning-Goldhagen debate in this activity lies outside the scope of this article.

9. It is possible they taught other strategies during sessions I did not observe.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by funding from the Spencer Foundation.