“One warm day in the spring of 2006, I visited a U.S. History class at a public charter school in a large Midwestern city …” (p. 1) This is the beginning of Diana Hess’ book about the methods of democratic discussion in classroom and it indicates its strong narrative quality including several teacher portraits and scenic vignettes. The book is winner of the 2009 “Exemplary Research in Social Studies” award from the National Council for the Social Studies. In an interview with Kerry G. Hill for the campus journal (School of Education, University of Wisconsin http://campusconnections.education.wisc.edu/post/LEARNING-Diana-Hess.aspx) the author roots the book’s content back to her own biography and socialization: While growing up in northern Illinois, Diana Hess recalls members of her family engaging in lively, raucous political discussions. “Disagreement wasn’t a negative thing,” she remembers.

Controversy in the Classroom. The Democratic Power of Discussion

Jacques Lacan and the adventure of insight: Psychoanalysis in contemporary culture

T H E CASE FOR GLOBAL warming resulting from increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide is discussed in such places as the Wall Street Journal (Seitz, 1996) as well as the scientific literature (Kerr, 1997). Global warming is a political issue. It is not the first, nor will it be the last, environmental science question with political implications. Almost by definit ion, any envi ronmenta l issue generated by mank ind ' s activit ies has both a science and a political component: for example, the role of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in reducing stratospheric ozone, the consequences of dam building for salmon populations of the Columbia River, and the ecological consequences of discharging minimally treated sewage in the offshore waters of San Diego. Each is a chal lenging scientific problem, the answers to which carry immense social and economic implicat ions and costs. Thus they are not only scientific issues but political ones as well. Because the systems in which these questions are imbedded are generally very complex, scientists are often unable to provide simple, unambiguous, answers: our conclusions are seldom without caveats. Often, however, the public does not require the kinds of evidence scientists require of one another in our professional journals before being prepared to take action through international treaty, legislation, or regulation. Approximate answers are adequate in many cases, For example:

/pdf/the-politics-of-global-warming-4u72os8me9.pdf

The Politics of Global Warming

While sense-making is a frequently used concept in everyday discourse and in several social science research areas, discussions about how the concept translates into methodology are currently scarc...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1609406921998907

Sense-making Analysis: A Framework for Multi-Strategy and Cross-Country Research:

ABSTRACT Growing polarization in European societies has changed not only political landscapes but also public debates about the past, which has, in turn, had an impact on the way history is taught and talked about in schools. This article explores how these trends are experienced by history educators across Europe and asks which issues history educators perceive to be controversial and sensitive and how they approach the prejudices they frequently encounter when addressing controversial and sensitive issues. Based on focus group discussions with 33 participants from 25 European countries, the article identifies three different forms of prejudice and describes how the focus group participants tried to undermine nationalism, counter xenophobia and fight anti-Semitism. Interpreted from a practice theory perspective, the examples shared by the focus group participants indicate that teaching strategies from the disciplinary approach “toolbox” can help to undermine nationalist stereotypical thinking if they are fine-tuned to the interests and emotions of the learning group and that history teaching routines shaped by the disciplinary approach need to be interrupted on occasion in order to reflect on and deconstruct xenophobic or anti-Semitic prejudice. Overall, the article argues that history teachers need to be aware of the affective dimension of historical learning, including underlying or open prejudices held by students, in order to support the teaching of democratic education goals such as respect and openness to cultural otherness.

Students’ prejudice as a teaching challenge: How European history educators deal with controversial and sensitive issues in a climate of political polarization

In this article, we discuss three ways that emotional content was presented, registered, performed, and communicated in a secondary social studies classroom discussion. In an analysis of a classroo...

Exploring the Emotional Dynamics of a Political Discussion.

This study works to answer the question: In what ways are pre-service social studies teachers conceptualizing the difficult knowledge of climate crisis? By analyzing a small group discussion following a pedagogical encounter with climate crisis in a teacher education program, and employing the notion of difficult knowledge, the author theorizes moments of hope, agency, and deferral in the sense-making processes. Issues of ecological harm have largely been excluded from social studies education research, including social studies teacher education, and this omission, paired with the urgent need for climate crisis pedagogies, builds the case for research that seeks to understand the ways in which pre-service social studies teachers are making sense of the difficult knowledge of climate crisis and the ways they are conceptualizing this as part of their work as social studies educators. The analysis reveals the multitude of challenges pre-service teachers face as they work to make sense of climate crisis both for themselves and in imagining the pedagogical demands of engaging young adolescents in issues of climate crisis in their future classrooms. Also highlighted are discourses of deep pessimism and deferral, running alongside hopefulness, as these pre-service teachers grapple with the size, urgency, injustice, and totality of the challenges that lay ahead. The ways these pre-service teachers are making sense of climate crisis has important implications for pedagogies of difficult knowledge regarding the complex challenges of climate justice relevant in the social studies classroom.

https://www.jsser.org/index.php/jsser/article/download/1864/459

Deferral, Agency, and Hope: Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers Making Sense of the Pedagogical Demands of Engaging Climate Crisis

The world is confronted with wicked environmental problems that cannot be well understood or acted upon without addressing their ethical dimensions. Research shows that official science curricula o...

Elaine Alvey

Papers

Exploring the Emotional Dynamics of a Political Discussion.

Deferral, Agency, and Hope: Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers Making Sense of the Pedagogical Demands of Engaging Climate Crisis

The undercurrents of neoliberal ethics in science curricula: a critical appraisal