Tackling Controversial Issues In The Primary School

How do you broach family values with seven year olds? Can you help young children understand racism? Can you avoid bringing your own prejudices into the classroom? Talking effectively about controversial issues with young children is a challenge facing every primary school teacher. Tackling Controversial Issues in the Primary School provides teachers with support and guidance as you engage with the more tricky questions and topics you and your pupils encounter. Illuminated with case studies and examples of how teachers and children have confronted issues together, this book helps you understand your own perspectives and provides fresh approaches for the primary classroom. It considers how best to work with parents and carers, whole-school policies for tackling issues, and ideas for circle time, setting up international links, school councils and buddying systems. The range of challenging topics covered includes: family values racism in mono and multi-cultural settings democracy and citizenship the environment and sustainability consumerism, finances and media advertising gender, health and identity grief and loss. For all student and practising primary teachers, Tackling Controversial Issues in the Primary School provides much needed support as you help your learners face complicated ideas, find their voice and get involved in the issues that they feel make a difference.

How do you broach family values with seven year olds? Can you help young children understand racism? Can you avoid bringing your own prejudices into the classroom? Talking effectively about controversial issues with young children is a challenge facing every primary school teacher. Tackling Controversial Issues in the Primary School provides teachers with support and guidance as you engage with the more tricky questions and topics you and your pupils encounter. Illuminated with case studies and examples of how teachers and children have confronted issues together, this book helps you understand your own perspectives and provides fresh approaches for the primary classroom. It considers how best to work with parents and carers, whole-school policies for tackling issues, and ideas for circle time, setting up international links, school councils and buddying systems. The range of challenging topics covered includes: family values racism in mono and multi-cultural settings democracy and citizenship the environment and sustainability consumerism, finances and media advertising gender, health and identity grief and loss. For all student and practising primary teachers, Tackling Controversial Issues in the Primary School provides much needed support as you help your learners face complicated ideas, find their voice and get involved in the issues that they feel make a difference.

Teaching controversial issues in the classroom is now more urgent and fraught than ever as we face up to rising authoritarianism, racial and economic injustice, and looming environmental disaster. Despite evidence that teaching controversy is critical, educators often avoid it. How then can we prepare and support teachers to undertake this essential but difficult work? Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues, based on a cross-national qualitative study, examines teacher educators’ efforts to prepare preservice teachers for teaching controversial issues that matter for democracy, justice, and human rights. It presents four detailed cases of teacher preparation in three politically divided societies: Northern Ireland, England, and the United States. The book traces graduate students’ learning from university coursework into the classrooms where they work to put what they have learned into practice. It explores their application of pedagogical tools and the factors that facilitated or hindered their efforts to teach controversy. The book’s cross-national perspective is compelling to a broad and diverse audience, raising critical questions about teaching controversial issues and providing educators, researchers, and policymakers tools to help them fulfill this essential democratic mission of education.

Teaching about controversial issues is crucial, but also very challenging. This text dissects the nature of a specific controversy and offers practical strategies for helping students work through possible solutions.

Headlines: Violenceis one of a series of books and accompanyingCD-ROMs which offer primary school teachers much-needed support forteaching controversial issues. Published in association with theCitizenship Foundation, theHeadlinestitles provide background knowledge andpractical teaching resources to introduce and appropriately managediscussions of sensitive, controversial and topical issues withconfidence. Children of all ages are now regularly exposed to media coverage of controversial topics. When a news story hits theheadlines, schools will naturally want to respond to the questions,fears and concerns of their pupils with sensitivity, accuracy andbalance. TheHeadlinestitles have been produced specifically to help teachersface this challenge. Features include: topic background knowledge andpresentation of opposing arguments and viewpoints; advice on how toavoid bias; lively lesson plans; reproduciblepupil resources including activity sheets, information sheets, casestudies and news reports. Each accompanying CD-ROM includes: editable versions of pupil theactivity sheets, so they can be adapted in responseto topical news stories; additional resource materials and photographsto display on a whiteboard as a focus for discussion; additionalbackground information for teachers.

Every school is different, but all schools face very similar challenges. Drawing on their combined teaching experience of over fifty years in both independent and state schools, educationalists David James and Ian Warwick have chosen ten questions that tackle the most difficult challenges that face schools today, and invited leading education experts to address them in stimulating and accessible essays, which are each under a thousand words. With contributions from John Hattie, David Blunkett, Doug Lemov, Anthony Seldon, Sandy Speicher, Tim Hawkes and many more, this insightful and engaging book features exclusive essays with some of the world’s most well-known and well-respected thinkers and speakers in education, business and politics, accompanied by thought-provoking introductions. The contributors provide new perspectives on some of the issues that occupy educationalists today; they challenge conventional wisdom and, above all, put forward practical, workable, evidence-based solutions that can transform teaching and learning. World Class is a powerful manifesto for change that nobody interested in education today can ignore.

A professional development programme for teachers, designed to support and promote the teaching of controversial issues in schools in Europe. This publication offers practical guidance, support and training to help strengthen the handling of controversial issues in schools and other educational settings. It seeks to help teachers, leaders and trainers to effectively address controversial issues as part of their everyday professional practice. This is essential if education is to equip children and young people with the competences needed to protect and defend human rights, democracy and the rule of law, to participate effectively and to live peacefully with others in our culturally diverse societies.