Teaching of ‘controversial issues’ in history and social science from teachers’ perspective

Abstract

‘Controversial issues’ are topics under which different groups have built irreconcilable arguments on. Therefore, they divide society. Some of these topics are now present in the teaching of history. Thus, the purpose of this research is to describe the teaching of ‘controversial issues’ in history subjects in secondary school. A nonstatistical randomly stratified sample with proportional representation was used. A self-administered questionnaire was applied to 111 teachers of public schools, private subsidy schools and private paid schools. A statistically descriptive analysis was made and a teachers’ typology was made. A degree of debatable nature was established in relation to the ‘controversial issues’ and their teaching. Teachers’ approach to teaching these topics was analyzed and activities in the classroom were described. Teachers avoided tackling controversial topics they considered themselves as being ‘neutral’ even though their performances were far away from that position.