Teaching in the Tip: Framing Controversy in Troubled Times

• In Event: Exploration of Civic and Politics Education

Abstract

This study explores how social studies teachers in diverse sociopolitical contexts around the U.S. approached framing controversial issues as open or settled for the purposes of leading controversial issue discussions in the classroom, including how teachers decide what is an appropriate topic for discussion in their classrooms and what guides their decisions. It draws on semi-structured interviews with public high school teachers conducted between 2017 and 2019 to contribute to literature on teaching controversial social and political issues in troubled times. Results suggest that teachers’ decisions were largely disconnected from scholarly criteria on these questions, and that issues in the “tip” leaned away from justice.

Author

• Rebecca Cooper Geller, University of Georgia