Teaching Controversial Issues

This book is written as a part of a process of inquiry initiated by my desire to pursue community-based ethnographic research that is critical, collaborative, academically rigorous and socially responsive. I examined the practicum classroom as a site of struggle and activism and investigated some of the challenges faced by pre-service teacher candidates trying to teach controversial issues in their practicum. I am concerned with how they negotiate a critical, inclusionary space in the curriculum and some of the resulting consequences of taking up a critical teaching practice. The study was intrinsically participatory; a collaborative process, attempting to provide accounts from the emic or insider perspective. The study was based on the premise that emerging possibilities for change might best be revealed by closely examining the struggles and real life experiences of new teachers working from the margins of the educational setting and by focusing on the quality of the teaching-learning activities being negotiated and forged. The findings from this study will serve to inform both the pre-service and in-service programs in teacher education.