Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This qualitative study sought to explore reasons why social studies teachers chose
to teach controversial issues and counternarratives in their classroom in an era where
doing so is dangerous for teachers and their job security, and how they go about doing so
in their classrooms. The theoretical framework of this study encompassed the notion that
the five selected teachers embodied and practiced elements of Foucauldian parrhēsía,
which is teaching the truth despite the risk of doing so, despite not having explicit
knowledge of this particular philosophy, and utilized counternarratives and controversial
issues as a means of challenging dominant social norms to bring about a more just and
equitable society. The existing literature suggests that their pre-service teacher education
provided little influence on their decisions, despite the positive historical, personal, and
democratic outcomes from teaching a curriculum exploring controversial issues and
counternarratives. Five teachers were recommended for this study due to their reputations
for teaching controversial issues and counternarratives in their social studies classrooms.
After interviewing and observing these teachers, a number of interesting findings came to
light, including a list of best practices for how to teach controversial issues in the
classroom, reasons why the teachers taught controversial issues in the classroom,
structures of support and barriers for teaching a critical social studies curriculum, and
differences between those who believed they taught controversial issues in their
classroom but did not, and those who actually did.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/13855 |
| Date | 12 May 2017 |
| Creators | Shaver, Erik James |
| Contributors | Rogan, Patricia, Medina, Monica, Keller, Deb, Engebretson, Kathryn, Pike, Gary |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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