Teachers' Sense-Making About Political Disclosure in a Contentious Political Climate

• In Event: 31.092 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Three - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 31.092-4 - Contentious Discussions in Contentious Times

Abstract

This paper explores how teachers are thinking about political disclosure in the classroom in light of the challenges posed by the increased hostility and contentiousness that characterizes the current broad political climate. Drawing on interviews conducted in 2017 and 2018 with social studies teachers across the nation, this paper contributes to scholarship on teacher political disclosure by exploring how this climate poses particular challenges for disclosure. Results suggest that teachers’ disclosure decisions are specific to their local context, that many feel they have learned how to handle contentiousness, and that conditions are challenging their previously held ideas about classroom neutrality. I argue that these findings indicate that the pedagogical decisions on disclosure are more complicated previously described.

Author

• Rebecca Cooper Geller, University of California - Los Angeles