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CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES
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Handling Controversial Issues
in the Classroom Resource:
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Controversial Issues
The Countryside Foundation for Education (CFE) provides a range of balanced teaching materials for schools that inform and encourage debate about the countryside. It also provides training for teachers and student teachers about how to use the countryside in their teaching. A significant part of this work relates to supporting teachers, student teachers and teacher educators in teaching topics that can be considered controversial. The teaching of controversial issues in schools is likely to receive greater emphasis with the introduction of Citizenship into the curriculum from 2002.
In 2000, CFE commissioned University College Worcester to undertake a six-month project in order to explore the way in which controversial issues are currently handled in the classroom. The purpose of the research was to provide insights into teachers’ views about the teaching of controversial issues. These insights could then be used to provide guidance on what strategy CFE might adopt in order to better support teachers, student teachers and teacher educators so that they in turn might teach these challenging areas of the curriculum more effectively.
We
should like to thank Chris Oulton, University of Gloucester,
Justin Dillon, King's College, London and
Marcus Grace, University of Southampton
for their contribution to the production of the
Handling Controversial Issues in the Classroom resources.
©
2002 The Countryside Foundation for Education
This material may be reproduced for educational purposes without
infringement of copyright provided reproduction is for school, college,
university and student only. The permission of the publisher must
be
obtained before reproducing copy of the material for other purposes.
Key Findings
Looking across all of the data collected, a number of key findings were identified.
- Controversial issues are taught at all stages of the curriculum from nursery to sixth form.
- The majority of respondents regularly taught controversial issues either weekly or termly.
- Few respondents claimed to have been formally trained in the teaching of controversial issues.
- The majority of respondents could readily identify a range of strategies that they use to teach controversial issues. These included: discussions, debates, role-play, teaching packs, investigations, outside speakers and visits.
- The majority of respondents did not consider that they were ‘well prepared’ to teach controversial issues. Half described themselves as ‘reasonably well prepared’ with over a third saying they were ‘not well prepared’.
- Respondents
identified a range of factors that militate against the effective
teaching of controversial issues. These factors differ depending
on the strategy used but included time in the curriculum, pupils’
behaviour, teaching resources, teacher knowledge and money.
- Over half of the teachers surveyed think that teachers are discouraged from dealing with the political aspects of controversial issues.
- Individual teachers in focus groups stated that they felt constrained by potential accusations of bias. However, this concern was not reflected as strongly in the responses to the questionnaire.
- Less than half of those responding were aware of current legislation relating to the teaching of controversial issues.
- 70% of respondents felt that there was insufficient guidance on the teaching of controversial issues either from their school or the National Curriculum.
- Individual teachers were able to describe progression in the teaching of controversial issues. However, this was not necessarily located in any planned framework within the school as a whole.
- Individual teachers appeared to have developed their own rationale or set of principles underpinning the approach they adopted when teaching controversial issues. However, in some cases this rationale needs adapting to fit different controversial issues, for example when teaching about factory farming compared with teaching about racism.
Over half of the respondents, felt that the introduction of Citizenship in the National Curriculum would have a big influence on the teaching of controversial issues.
Controversial issues are, therefore, an important aspect of the curriculum for teachers in all phases. However, there does not seem to be a widely accepted framework within which this teaching can be effectively delivered. Some teacher educators included work on controversial issues in their programmes. On the other hand the majority of teachers claimed not to have received training in the teaching of controversial issues. Therefore the research suggested that there is a real need for the development of support materials for teachers.
Developing
new resources for teachers
and teacher educators
The CFE has now, therefore, produced a series of staff development materials. These materials deal with generic issues relating to the teaching of controversial issues. The materials are suitable for use by individuals or groups of teachers in formal or non-formal settings. For example, an individual teacher might access the materials using their PC at home in order to inform the way in which they decide to teach a particular topic. Alternatively, a teacher educator might select a set of materials and use these to plan part of an initial teacher education programme for student teachers.
Four areas of activity have been developed. Together these can be used as a whole staff development course. However, each individual area of activity is free standing. Also, users, by downloading sections, are free to assemble a staff development package suited to their own needs.
The four areas are:
| Section A | -
the nature of controversial issues; |
| Section B | - developing principles for teaching about controversial issues; |
| Section C | -
teaching
strategies for dealing with controversial issues; - applying the principles in practice; |
| Section D | - policy development. |