Facilitating a Controversial Issues Discussion in Elementary School about Using Indigenous Sports Mascots

Abstract

In this study, we investigate how a third-grade teacher enacted controversial issues discussion about the use of Indigenous people as sports mascots. We highlight how the teacher supported eight students’ sensemaking about the issue during small-group instruction. We provide suggestions for controversial issues teaching in elementary social studies.

Keywords:

• Controversial issues
• elementary social studies
• discussion facilitation
• race/ism

Notes

1 All names of people and places are pseudonyms.

2 Following scholars in the field (Shear et al., 2015), we use “Indigenous people” in our writing; however, “Native American” and “Indian” were the terms used in the classroom.

3 When referring to individuals or a group of people, “White” is capitalized following APA style guidelines. However, references to concepts such as whiteness and white privilege are not capitalized.

4 Please contact the authors for a complete list of texts used during instruction.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan [Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant]. However, the views expressed herein are our own.