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Controversy, citizenship, and counterpublics: Developing democratic habits of mind
Abstract
A wealth of research suggests the importance of classroom discussion of controversial issues for adequately preparing students for participation in democratic life. Teachers, and the larger public, however, still shy away from such discussion. Much of the current research seeking to remedy this state of affairs focuses exclusively on developing knowledge and skills. While important, this ignores significant ways in which students’ beliefs about the concept or nature of controversy itself might affect such discussions and potentially, the sort of citizen that educators are fostering. We argue that examining the concept of ‘controversy’ is central to conducting such discussions and propose a framework of four crucial virtues or habits of mind that can be developed through such an examination. We illustrate how these four habits of mind are essential for establishing classroom ‘counterpublics’ that aim to develop more justice-oriented democratic citizens.
... It is understood that a discussion is an important tool for the representation of citizens. Therefore, sustaining and strengthening democracy will require certain habits of mind (Sheppard, Ashcraft, & Larson, 2011). Sustaining and strengthening habits of mind for a democratic discussion is an important task of educational institutions. ...
... On the contrary, several studies report that discussion is a rare phenomenon in classrooms (Chandler & Ehrlich, 2016;Flynn, 2009;Nystrand, Gamoran, & Carbonaro, 1998). In a study, it was stated that, despite its importance in democratic and active citizenship, TCs and teachers were not willing to use discussion skills or methods (Sheppard, Ashcraft, & Larson, 2011). Approximately 40% of high school teachers who participated in the research conducted by Maden & Kaya (2018) stated that discussion is not "always" beneficial. ...
Discussion is both a democratic civic skill and a teaching method. It has been observed thatsocial studies stakeholders are generally kept their distance toward discussion. It has been observedthat there are few studies carried out on the discussion attitudes of teacher candidates (TCs) in thecontext of social studies. It is observed that TCs have both positive and negative attitudes towarddiscussion. On the other hand, the number of studies examining secondary school students' attitudestoward the discussion is limited. The current study aims to examine the attitudes of three participantgroups (student, teacher, and TCs) toward the discussion. The survey model, which is one of thequantitative research methods, was used. The sample of the study consisted of 269 students, 617 TCs,and 167 teachers, a total of 1053 participants, determined by the convenience sampling method. Inorder to collect data, the argumentative attitude scale developed by Infante and Rancer (1982) as 20items and adapted into Turkish as ten items by Turunç, Eser, and Dinç (2018), and a personalinformation form developed by the researchers was used. Frequency and percentage distributionsregarding the demographic characteristics of students, TCs, and teachers, as well as the argumentativeattitudes of the participants, were determined according to the independent variables. According to thefindings, teachers' discussion attitudes did not differ significantly by experience and gender. Asignificant difference was found between the grade levels of TCs and secondary school students. Also,it was observed that male TCs had a higher avoidance attitude. The research showed that althoughteachers, students, and TCs had positive attitudes, they also had various concerns about the discussion.In light of the results, the participation of teachers, students, and TCs in carefully prepared andconducted discussions and the examination of conflicting emotions with longitudinal studies wassuggested.
... On the other hand, progressive education is failing by offering children freedom without responsibility. In contrast, certain process-centred approaches aim to develop the democratic habits of mind and skills that are characteristic of a 'thick' or participatory notion of democracy (Sheppard et al. 2011). Sheppard et al. (2011 argue that these dispositions are developed through conceptual investigations (analysis of abstract concepts), an appreciation of the experiential and social context, epistemic independence (thinking and learning for oneself) and engagement in discussions about controversial issues (including the normative conceptions of childhood). ...
... can bring to their intellectual explorations. On the other hand, progressive education is failing by offering children freedom without responsibility. In contrast, certain process-centred approaches aim to develop the democratic habits of mind and skills that are characteristic of a 'thick' or participatory notion of democracy (Sheppard et al. 2011). Sheppard et al. (2011 argue that these dispositions are developed through conceptual investigations (analysis of abstract concepts), an appreciation of the experiential and social context, epistemic independence (thinking and learning for oneself) and engagement in discussions about controversial issues (including the normative conceptions of childhood). As ...
Classical conceptual distinctions in philosophy of education assume an individualistic subjectivity and hide the learning that can take place in the space between child (as educator) and adult (as learner). Grounded in two examples from experience I develop the argument that adults often put metaphorical sticks in their ears in their educational encounters with children. Hearers’ prejudices cause them to miss out on knowledge offered by the child, but not heard by the adult. This has to do with how adults view education, knowledge, as much as child, and is even more extreme when child is also black. The idea is what Miranda Fricker calls ‘epistemic injustice’ which occurs when someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower. Although her work concerns gender and race, I extrapolate her radical ideas to (black) child. Awareness of the epistemic injustice that is done to children and my proposal for increased epistemic modesty and epistemic equality could help transform pedagogical spaces to include child subjects as educators. A way forward is suggested that involves ‘cracking’ the concept of child and a different non-individualised conception of education.
... Moreover, Seaspiracy reaped a lot of controversies. Controversy can be defined as a debatable argument in the altercation and raises controversy in the community (Sheppard et al., 2011). The controversy in Seaspiracy arose because so many marine animals were explored for human consumption. ...
This research aims to discover the portrayal of controversy, the environmental impact, and the prevention of overfishing in the documentary Seaspiracy. This research uses a qualitative description method from a semiotic perspective. Until now, the research has been discussed on overfishing on fisherman's income and analysis of the law's review of overfishing, but the research of controversy of overfishing portrays no study has explored to use of semiotic perception. Semiotics is a science that examines signs. In interpreting signs, the researchers use Charles Sanders Pierce's semiotic analysis. This model is famous for its triangle of meaning: the sign, object, and interpretant. The result of this research is that there are elements of a sign portraying the controversy of overfishing: Bycatch, the Fishing Industry, the Statement: "Stop Eating Marine Animals," and Marine Stewards Council (MSC) certification. The four controversial portrayals will be deep to analyze from a semantics perspective to produce a significant meaning based on the scene that appeared in the documentary movie itself. In conclusion, semiotic perception will increase students' understanding of linguistics through signs, objects, and interpretant
... Also, a " process-centered " interactive space should be made in classes where children can bring trust, honesty, and playfulness to their intellectual explorations (Murris, 2013; Sheppard, Ashcraft, & Larson, 2011). For bilingual teachers, it is important that they put more effort into creating interactive learning environments where young bilinguals and multilinguals are allowed to freely express their ideas and share varying perspectives about gender/gender roles, using two or more languages. ...
This article discusses the results of an empirical study that examined young bilingual students' discussions of picture books dealing with gender themes in a Spanish/English bilingual classroom. The study focused on the reading of five picture books by sixteen 5-year-old Mexican-origin children at a small charter school. The data were collected by video/audio recordings, interviews, and children's artifacts over a period of five months. The findings suggest that discussions about gender roles using two languages have potential to help kindergarten bilingual children think critically about gender roles and avoid gender stereotypes. This study aims to offer critical approaches to early childhood and bilingual education, providing insights into how teachers can create supportive literacy environments in which bilingual children can develop a critical awareness of gender and gender roles from an early age.
... One of the major obstacles in SA regarding democracy as a way of life and education as a means of nurturing democrats (Biesta 2010), is that many South Africans Ethics and Education 47 understand democracy in terms of access to socio-economic goods, despite the highly participatory notion of democratic citizenship forged by the anti-apartheid struggle (Enslin 2003) and laid down in the country's human rights-based Constitution and Curriculum 2005. However, participation requires an approach to democracy that is not limited to the acquisition of socio-economic goods, but aims to develop the democratic habits of mind and skills that are characteristic of a 'thick' or participatory notion of democracy (Sheppard, Ashcraft, and Larson 2011). These dispositions are developed through conceptual investigations (analysis of abstract concepts), an appreciation of the experiential and social context, epistemic independence (thinking and learning for oneself) and engagement in discussions about controversial issues (Sheppard, Ashcraft, and Larson 2011, 75-6). ...
Practitioners of education in South Africa (SA) struggle painfully between the extremes of its authoritarian and deeply religious roots that prescribe blind obedience to people in authority and their elders, and the demands of open-mindedness, critical thinking and also solidarity required for democratic citizenship. A particular pedagogy was used with some 400 student teachers to investigate philosophically the rights and wrongs of corporal punishment in schools. This article justifies the use of this particular approach to moral education – despite its ‘Western’ liberal roots – in post-apartheid SA as it opens up a non-judgemental space to explore philosophically what students actually believe. Without moralising or slipping into moral relativism, such philosophical teaching increases student participation, autonomy and self-discipline, and at the same time develops moral reasoning and moral knowledge. Hence, it needs to be introduced as a pedagogy in institutions that educate future teachers.
The rise of anti-immigration arguments within the European Union (EU) poses significant challenges to our democratic existence. As such, the promotion of critical thinking (CT) for the development of a multicultural citizenship education has been underlined. Recent research also shows a close connection between emotions and cognition with positive effects over students’ motivation to engage in CT. Through the analysis of focus groups with 61 Portuguese secondary school students, this research shows that they are critical about democratic political values and practices at the EU level, and highly motivated to discuss controversial political and humanitarian issues that are emotionally engaging. Educational practices that encourage the discussion of controversial topics in the classroom, welcoming students’ emotional engagement with these topics, can increase their resilience to anti-immigration rhetoric.
Each year I teach Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students a short course on school ethics. A core part of the course is to analyse a case study—a moral dilemma that the students themselves have drawn from their own experiences during teaching practice in one of the university’s local partnership schools. In 2014 it involved a disclosure of violence in the classroom. The dilemma was leaked to the school, and as a direct consequence, the school decided not to take in future student teachers from the university where I work. I use the case study constructively to explore democratic governance involving ethical issues.
In this article, we argue that democratic habits remain as vital for education and culture today as they were when Dewey published Democracy and Education in 1916. We take our point of departure from his treatment of habit and education in the book. Dewey dissolves the stereotypical notion that habits refer solely to mechanical, repetitive and mindless routines. He reconstructs the concept so that we can see why habits can be both stable and dynamic. They can evolve through action and reflection upon the consequences of action. We draw from his analysis a conception of democratic habits that educators today can cultivate across the curriculum and overall life of the school.
Educators and policymakers increasingly pursue programs that aim to strengthen democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. This article calls attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education programs. It offers analyses of a 2-year study of educational programs in the United States that aimed to promote democracy. Drawing on democratic theory and on findings from their study, the authors detail three conceptions of the “good” citizen—personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented—that underscore political implications of education for democracy. The article demonstrates that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences.
Social Postmodernism defends a postmodern perspective anchored in the politics of the new social movements. The volume preserves the focus on the politics of the body, race, gender, and sexuality as elaborated in postmodern approaches. But these essays push postmodern analysis in a particular direction: toward a social postmodernism which integrates the micro-social concerns of the new social movements with an institutional and cultural analysis in the service of a transformative political vision.
Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School is an accessible, practical, and engaging methods textbook that introduces pre-service teachers to various instructional strategies and helps them to decide how and when to use these methods in the classroom. Classrooms are comprised of diverse learners, and aspiring teachers will face complex decisions about the assessment of student learning and classroom management. Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School equips pre-service teachers with the methodological tools to promote understanding, conceptual awareness, and learning for every child in the classroom. Features include: clear, step-by-step descriptions of seven instructional techniques that pre-service teachers can realistically implement within the classroom setting practical suggestions for ways to integrate effective classroom management and valid assessment techniques with each instructional strategy concrete examples to illustrate each concept or teaching method described guidelines for deciding which instructional methods are most appropriate to different classroom situations and for diverse learners guides for creating lesson plans access to a comprehensive companion website that provides additional resources and further ways to engage with the material presented in the chapters. http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/instructionalstrategies.
In this article, Dwight Boyd focuses on a dilemma that is at the heart of sincere commitments to cultural pluralism. When the moral aspects of cultural diversity are fully appreciated, the "dilemma of diversity" is revealed as the tension point resulting from the acceptance of the fact of "reasonable moral pluralism" conjoined with the perceived need to morally ground prescriptive intentions to promote cultural diversity within a democratic society. After discussing this dilemma, Boyd analyzes three perspectives commonly found in response. He argues that each of these perspectives is inadequate by revealing how it fails to come to grips with one or the other side of the dilemma, despite its surface appeal. He then shows how, in each of these perspectives, this failure functions to conceal and protect dominant points of view within the diversity. He concludes by sketching out a positive direction for successfully addressing the dilemma of diversity hinted at in the successes and failures of each of the three perspectives.
In this article, Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, and Linda Powell juxtapose three different school communities and the schools' various approaches to dealing with differences among their students. They use notions of equal status contact theory, supplemented by three literatures - those of community, difference, and democracy - to discuss three desegregated spaces on a continuum, from one in which racial differences are unquestioned and racist discourse uninterrupted by faculty or staff to one in which teachers are actively working toward creating a space where differences are acknowledged and respected. Through this contrasting of desegregated spaces, the authors challenge readers to imbalance privilege, incite community, to both value and pluralize difference - to create teaching and learning spaces that nurture multiracial and multiethnic communities.
Classroom discussion can play an important role in the formation of citizens, and in more ways than one. Yet recitation persists as the discursive norm in classrooms, and the literature on discussion lacks clarity as to purpose. This article contributes a delineation of two purposes—interpretation (enlightenment) and decision making (engagement)—and argues that they are elemental to both discussion pedagogy and citizen formation. As practices, they upend recitation and offer an occasion for liberal education, including opening oneself to difference. The author aims to show that classroom discussion is useful both pedagogically and politically when the two purposes are articulated in a diverse school setting, and that critics risk their own interests when they dismiss the possibilities of discussion.
This article reviews two ethnographic studies in which "disruptive pedagogies" are engaged in public schools, designed to enable youth to work across categories of difference toward a grounded sense of social critique and participation. Respectfully challenging/extending the premises of reproduction theory, it is argued that educational researchers not only need to theorize the means of (re)production by which public schools insure class, race, ethnic and gender stratification, but also to theorize how counter-hegemonic moments in school, in which educators undertake disruptive pedagogies, affect social consciousness and community.
Focuses on the use of classroom discussions as a teaching strategy and addresses the barriers to good classroom discussions. Explores the work of two teachers who successfully integrated discussion into their classrooms using two different techniques: (1) a seminar; and (2) a deliberation. Discusses the differences between seminars and deliberations. (CMK)
Reviews the problems and benefits associated with instruction of controversial issues, questioning the effectiveness of a neutral and objective position in the discussion of controversial topics. Also assesses prevalent teacher tendencies in instructional approaches and offers suggestions for classroom adoption. (ML)
Worldwide immigration and quests for rights by minority groups have caused social scientists and educators to raise serious questions about liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship that historically have dominated citizenship education in nation-states. The author of this article challenges liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education. He argues that citizenship education should be reformed so that it reflects the home cultures and languages of students from diverse groups, and he contends that group rights can help individuals to attain structural equality. In the final part of the article, he discusses the implications of his analysis for transforming citizenship education.
The concept of dispositions has commanded considerable attention in both philosophy and education. In this essay, Laurance Splitter draws on philosophy to take a fresh look at dispositions in education, specifically teacher education. Bypassing the pitfalls of both subjectivity and crude behaviorism, he proposes a conceptual framework in which dispositions figure as drivers or triggers of our intentional behavior, one that gives prominence to language in general and to dialogue in particular. Splitter draws on an emerging school of thought that treats classrooms as inquiring communities to argue that students at all levels—including teacher education—should engage in dialogue about what does or does not, and should or should not, move them to behave in certain ways. Finally, Splitter offers a way through the sociopolitical battleground on which the topic of dispositions in teacher education has recently found itself.
The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers’ thinking about classroom discussion. Teachers have multiple conceptions of classroom discussion, but these conceptions often intersect with two purposes for using classroom discussion: (1) discussion as a method of instruction, where the purpose is to help engage students in a lesson, and learn academic content by encouraging verbal interactions; and (2) discussion competence as the subject matter, where the desired outcome is for students to learn to discuss more effectively. To better understand teachers’ use of discussion in the classroom, this study examined teachers’ thinking about discussion with these two purposes in mind. Six high school social studies teachers were purposively selected to permit data collection from a theoretically interesting sample. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and a think-aloud task, and were analyzed using grounded theory's constant-comparative technique. Implications of these findings for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers interested in classroom discussion are examined.
This study examined the teaching of controversial public issues (CPI) in middle and high school social studies classes. I sought to better understand the instruction and conceptions undergirding the instruction of secondary social studies teachers who were nominated by discussion experts as especially skillful at teaching their students to participate more effectively in CPI discussions. Using grounded theory, I analyzed three types of data: classroom observation field notes, interviews of the teachers, and CPI discussion teaching artifacts. First, I describe CPI discussions in the teachers' classes, then introduce six propositions induced about the teaching of CPI discussions. Next, I discuss how the propositions challenge and add to the existing literature on classroom discussion in secondary social studies, and suggest implications for the CPI discussion teaching practice of teachers and teacher educators.
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