The Possibilities and Perils of Developing Controversial Issues in Civic Curriculum With Teachers in Shanghai

• In Event: Curriculum Collaboration of Researchers, Policy Makers, and Practitioners for Civic Competence: Perspectives From China

Abstract

Purposes
Discussing controversial public issues could facilitate civic competence of students (Hahn, 1998) and the development of a democratic society (Parker & Hess, 2001; Hess, 2002). This study joins the effort of incorporating controversial issues into the civic curriculum (Hess, 2004) and addresses the concerns and attitudes of teachers (Gindi & Erlich, 2018). We adopted design-based research paradigm featuring researcher-practitioner partnership. The core research question is: When researchers and teachers develop controversial issues in civic curriculum, what kind of possibilities and challenges would they meet in curriculum design and implementation?

Theoretical framework
Controversial public issues are unresolved questions of public policy that spark significant disagreement (Hess, 2002). Advancing the idea of controversial issues under the perspective of global citizenship education, this study responds to the sustainable development goals of “good health and wellbeing” (UNESCO, 2017) and further adopts the idea of contextualization (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and glocalization to adapt the curriculum themes to local context.

Methods and data sources
Researchers and teachers from a public middle school in Shanghai collaborated in this design-based research and designed a curriculum unit on “life and wellbeing,” focusing on the prominent conflicts between the right of life and health and intellectual property rights. Data of this study include group meetings of researchers, preparation and reflection meetings with teachers, filmed classroom observation, interviews with students and teachers, and learning materials.

Preliminary Findings
1. Contextualized controversial issues should be included in the curriculum to respond to and sustain the need of both students and teachers. The whole conversation with the principal started with the local news that a middle school student commits suicide following a quarrel with her mom. The school administration was concerned with students’ attitude and values toward life. The theme “life and wellbeing” thus addresses the significant and urgent need of teachers.
2. It takes a professional culture of trusted experts to successfully follow through research ideas, particularly on controversial ones. The top-down administrative system, though criticized often, nurtures the professional community and facilitates collaboration and implementation of this design-based curriculum, even for controversial issues. The role of researchers is to provide curriculum ideas/approaches for the teachers and principals that are within the proximal zone of teachers and scaffold for the teachers.
3. To implement controversial issues, one of the most difficult parts is to understand what has been the most controversial for the teachers and how researchers could do to ease the agitation. The biggest concern, as Mr. King elaborated, is that “student would give up their life when the difficulties come up.” Yet we argue that teachers' stance regarding controversial issues is both practically necessary and theoretically grounded.

Scholarly significance
This study stands to contribute to our understanding of developing controversial issues in the curriculum in Chinese national and cultural context that is limited in encouraging and valuing alternative viewpoints. This study also presents possibilities of researcher-teacher collaboration in a culture that encompasses trust and eagerness to involve researchers on board as knowledgeable partners in the professional community.

Authors

• Tao Wang, East China Normal University

• Mengping Zheng, East China Normal University

• Yunhuo Cui, East China Normal University

• Hao Lei, East China Normal University