Teaching Controversial Issues: The Attitudes of Student Primary Teachers
Guidelines for Scottish schools have little to say on the value or otherwise of controversy as a criterion for the selection of topics for teaching. By contrast, the authors of the recently published advisory report on citizenship education for schools in England and Wales and many writers in academic and pedagogical journals are enthusiastic about the importance of such topics as a means to developing democratic citizenship. This study sought to establish the views of beginning teachers in South-west Scotland. Eighty-seven final-year student teachers for the 5–12 age range took part in the study over a period of two years. The data gathered reveal considerable variety in responses but a clear rejection of issues involving personal, face-to-face violence by contrast with zealous enthusiasm for teaching using issues of perhaps equally tragic consequences but of a more impersonal nature such as famine or pollution-associated disease. The potentially explanatory variables - chronological and spatial or geographic distance - were helpful in understanding some choices but the presence of other variables made interpretation extremely complex and uncertain.