Confronting conflicts. History teachers' reactions to spontaneous controversial remarks. Teaching History

Abstract

Sometimes, things don’t go to plan. Current events come into the classroom, especially the history classroom. How should students’ responses to current affairs be dealt with there? How should students’ desire to voice their opinions be handled if their opinion is unpopular. What if the student is simply wrong? How far can moral relativism be acknowledged, explored and scrutinised in the history classroom, when the topic under discussion is controversial and urgent?

Full text

Teaching History 175 June 2019
The Historical Association68
After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, all schools in the
Netherlands were asked to commemorate the victims with one minute of silence.
What would you have done if, a few minutes before the commemoration, a
pupil in your class had stood up and said he would not be silent as the attacks
were all part of a conspiracy?
is article is meant to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about
discussing controversial historical issues in history education. Teaching History
has a long tradition of publishing articles about controversial topics in the
classroom.1 ese articles sometimes originate from experiences of authors
living in divided societies, for example Northern Ireland.2 In many other
Western countries, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, the debates about
segregation and integration have become both more polarised in public debate
and increasingly apparent in the classroom. In the light of the recent terrorist
attacks (Paris, Brussels, Berlin and London), and the increased polarisation in
Europe, we noticed that that there is a growing need for practical knowledge and
models of how to deal with these types of topics in the classroom. What would
you do if one of your pupils framed a terrorist attack as a conspiracy theory,
or if a pupil seemed to sympathise with some of the motives of the terrorist?
Teachers can benet from previous research investigating the teaching of
controversial topics. Much of this research focusses on long-standing, well-
known controversial topics such as the Arab-Israeli conict. With such well-
established topics, teachers either have enough time and existing materials to
prepare very thoroughly or else they can avoid the topic altogether. In this article,
we will focus on spontaneous reactions of pupils in the classroom arising from:
• recent events in society, such as terrorist attacks, and
• unexpected controversial remarks by pupils.
Controversial pupil remarks can shock teachers. e situation in the classroom
can become quite tense. In the Netherlands and Belgium teachers are expected
to teach pupils essential competences of democratic citizenship, such as open-
mindedness, tolerance, perspective taking and critical thinking, and must
respond appropriately in such situations.3 e professional nurture of such
citizen competencies can come under pressure in stressful and potentially unsafe
moments in the classroom. In our work in teacher training we have noticed
that teachers can experience these moments as dicult. ey can feel unsure
and sometimes even incapable of acting in the ‘right’ way. ey nd it dicult
to determine what, exactly, the ‘right’ way even is.
is article is based on our experiences as teachers, teacher educators, and
researchers in an urban multicultural context in Amsterdam and Utrecht in the
Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium. We will rst discuss the denition of a
controversial topic and attempt to describe those topics which can cause conict
in the classroom in the Netherlands and Belgium. We will then discuss two
Bjorn Wansink, Jaap Patist,
Itzél Zuiker, Geerte Savenije
and Paul Janssenswillen
Bjorn Wansink is a teacher educator
and researcher at the University of
Utrecht, Netherlands. Jaap Patist is a
teacher educator at the University of
Applied Sciences, Utrecht. Itzél Zuiker is
a researcher at the University of Utrecht.
Geerte Savenije is a teacher educator
and researcher at the University of
Amsterdam. Paul Janssenswillen is a
teacher educator and researcher at the
University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Confronting
conflicts:
history teachers’ reactions to
spontaneous controversial remarks
Sometimes, things don’t go to plan.
Current events come into the classroom,
especially the history classroom. How
should students’ responses to current
affairs be dealt with there? How should
students’ desire to voice their opinions
be handled if their opinion is unpopular.
What if the student is simply wrong? How
far can moral relativism be acknowledged,
explored and scrutinised in the history
classroom, when the topic under discussion
is controversial and urgent?
Working in the Netherlands and Belgium,
Wansink, Patist, Zuiker, Savenije and
Janssenswillen have developed and
refined ways of doing this. In this article
they provide an overview of researchers’
thinking on the issue, and clear strategies
and guidelines for what a history teacher
might do to ensure that any unplanned
discussion is, at least, respectful, engaging
and rigorous.

Teaching History 175 June 2019
The Historical Association 69
Figure 1: Examples of ground rules for discussion
scientic theories that can help teachers understand some
of the classroom dynamics when unexpected events occur
during a lesson. Furthermore, based on previous research,
we will point out that conicts can develop through several
stages. We argue that these stages need to be taken into
account when discussing dierent teacher reactions. Finally,
we provide a model that can help teachers to reect on the
possible consequences of pupils’ reactions in the classroom.
We think it is important that teachers are aware of the way
their own experiences and norms aect the way they deal
with controversies in the classroom. erefore, self-reection
by teachers on their own beliefs and values, which can
inuence the way they address and interact with pupils both
individually and collectively, is crucial in considering how
they will react to controversial remarks in the classroom.
Controversial topics in the
Netherlands and Belgium
In general, controversial topics serve as a setting for studying
conicting views and multiple perspectives in the classroom.
Conflicts are part of life and inherent to democratic
society. In interpersonal contact, conicts are unavoidable.
Differences of opinion can be rational, ideological or
emotional, and in most cases these factors will overlap. In this
paper we focus on those controversies that create disputes
between social groups with (partly) dierent values that can
arouse strong feelings and divide classrooms, communities,
and society in general.4 Writing about controversial issues
cannot be isolated from sociopolitical and cultural context;
there might be dierent challenges for teachers in dierent
societal contexts.5
Several studies in the Dutch and Dutch-speaking Belgian
context have reported that teachers sometimes feel insecure
about teaching controversial issues.6 In some cases, teachers
avoided teaching these issues. A recent study conducted
among 82 Dutch history teachers, teaching in dierent
societal contexts, investigated which topics they perceived
as controversial in their lessons.7 The most frequently
mentioned topic was ‘differences and conflict between
Islamic and non-Islamic people’. More specically, the study
showed that teachers especially struggled with the sensitivity
related to current conicts in society regarding Islamic
extremism (terrorist attacks, ISIS, Islamic fundamentalism)
and the radical response to it by right-wing politicians and
pupils. Teachers had diculties with teaching these topics
because they were afraid of erce pupil reactions and they did
not want their pupils’ feelings to get hurt. Very importantly,
teachers felt unable to reach pupils with radical political and/
or religious perspectives so as to enable them to discuss these
perspectives in an open dialogue.
Teacher expertise and
controversial topics
It is well known that teaching about controversial issues is
dicult. To do this successfully teachers need to combine
various types of expertise. Before engaging with pupils in
discussing a specic controversial topic, in general, teachers
want to feel condent about their expertise. ree types of
expertise are particularly important, namely:
• classroom management expertise;
• expertise in subject matter;
• pedagogical expertise.8
First, because addressing contrasting perspectives can
generate erce discussions in the classroom, it is important
that teachers are able to create a stable and safe learning
environment.9 erefore, it is important to establish codes
of conduct or classroom rules regarding the ways in which
pupils should behave when there is disagreement on an issue.
In the Netherlands we recommend teachers to follow the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to use Article
1 of the Dutch Constitution, which states:
All who are in the Netherlands are in equal cases
treated equally. Discrimination because of religion,
belief, political opinion, race, gender or on any ground
whatsoever is not allowed.
We are aware that this article can create tensions with Article
7 in the Dutch Constitution which states the right of ‘freedom
of speech’. erefore, in our teacher education programs we
advise teachers to establish ground rules for discussion in
1. Acknowledge that opinions are often not right or wrong, but merely
different.
2. Do not interrupt the speaker.
3. Support your views with evidence and examples.
4. It is okay to criticise what was said, but not the person expressing the
opinion.
5. Listen and speak with the same respect you would like shown to you.
Source: www.socialstudies.org

Teaching History 175 June 2019
The Historical Association70
co-operation with the class (see an example of ground rules
in Figure 1).10 e second area of expertise that facilitates
discussion of different perspectives is subject matter
knowledge and insight in pupils’ cultural backgrounds.
Knowledge of the topic and the pupils’ backgrounds gives
teachers condence to address dicult moral questions
or to address dierent perspectives.11 Finally, teachers also
need knowledge about instructional strategies to guide
pupils’ emotions, but also actively to promote open-minded
thinking and critical thinking.12
Social identity theory
A widely promoted approach of controversial topics is to
discuss multiple perspectives on the specic topic.13 An
underlying expectation of this approach is that an exploration
of dierent perspectives is a valuable and necessary way for
pupils to nd mutual understanding of dierent cultures
and to become responsible and tolerant democratic citizens
in the present. Within this approach, the ability to take the
perspective of someone else is considered an important
aspect of tolerance. Tolerance, according to Verkuyten and
colleagues, means:
On the one hand, there is what one sincerely believes is
true and right, but on the other hand, one must be able
and willing to try to understand the perspective of other
groups.14
Previous research indicates that when teaching history
from a multi-perspective approach, pupils (and teachers)
nd it is easier to understand somebody else’s perspective
when a (historical) topic is perceived as cold history
(that is, the teacher or pupil does not identify with the
topic). When the teacher or pupils identify themselves
with a topic, their willingness to take another person’s
perspective can decrease.15 However, several other studies
by Barton and McCully, Goldberg and Ron, and Savenije
and De Bruijn, have shown that pupils’ attitudes towards
other perspectives when studying controversial historical
topics can be dependent on the teaching approach and
learning activities.16 Both a critical inquiry approach and
an empathetic narrative approach seem to have positive
eects on pupils’ use of history and historical sources in a
multi-perspective way.17
In order to understand pupils’ attitudes towards perspectives
other than their own, when it comes to controversial topics,
it is helpful to consider the ways in which pupils position
themselves in social groups. According to social identity
theory, individuals construct the idea of themselves and the
other by positioning themselves and others within a social
categorisation system.18 Pupils can feel themselves belonging,
for example, to a specic football team, cultural group,
region or/and religion. Moreover, people strive to maintain a
positive social identity largely from favourable comparisons
that can be made between the in-group and the out-group.
It is important for history teachers to realise that historical
narratives serve as resources of identity, as specic narratives
can help members of a certain group achieving a positive
image, while another group can perceive the same (historical)
narrative as a threat to their social identity.19 When a positive
image of a pupil’s in-group is threatened by unfavourable
(historical) evidence, this can lead to a ‘cognitive closure’
and rejection of the evidence. For example, Epstein showed
that African-American and European-American adolescents
constructed conicting beliefs regarding the credibility of
secondary historical sources about slavery.20
Mortality salience theory
Social identity theory is related to a further theory known as
mortality salience theory. We introduce mortality salience
theory here because it provides a way of guiding teachers in
Figure 2: Simplified version of Craig’s Iceberg Model
Continuation
Intensity of the conflict
Conflict
Time
Escalation
Preparation
Rapprochement
Reconciliation

Teaching History 175 June 2019
The Historical Association 71
handling instances that relate to terrorism, which we discuss
later in the article. Mortality salience theory states that
people want to avoid anxiety that derives from knowledge
of the inevitability of death.21 From a psychological
perspective, when confronted with a terrorist attack, people
are confronted with a vulnerability (death) that cannot be
controlled. is is because a terrorist attack can happen
anywhere, causing fear among citizens.
Mortality salience theory states that when people have to
manage their anxiety, they seek reassurance. is increases
their faith in the validity of their own cultural world-view
and can lead to rejection of other cultures. In relation to
terrorist attacks this can lead to less favourable attitudes and
stereotype thinking about Muslims (i.e. guilt by association)
and multiculturalism. Mortality salience theory and social
identity theory partly explain certain experiences oen
described by teachers concerning difficulties they face
immediately aer a terrorist attack: due to intense emotions,
such as fear, anger and sorrow, it oen is dicult to discuss
multiple perspectives directly after a terrorist attack,
especially in multicultural classes.
Temporal development of
conflicts
Colin Craig, a conict mediator working in areas such as
Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia, has developed a
model to show how conicts can mature in dierent temporal
phases.22 Based on the work of the Dutch philosopher Bart
Brandsma, we present a simplied version of this practical
model in which ve, rather than the original seven, dierent
phases of conict are distinguished.23 e model is depicted
in Figure 2 and consists of two axes. e horizontal axis
represents time and the vertical axis represents the intensity
of the conflict. The five different phases of conflict are
preparation, escalation, continuation, rapprochement, and
reconciliation.
e rst phase of conict is ‘preparation’. Conicts can grow
slowly or rapidly, but there is always a period of frustration
creating growing tension before the conflict escalates.
Because conict can grow without visible or audible signs,
teachers are not always aware of this phase. However, when
a teacher is able to identify a particular frustration they
still have the chance to make contact with the pupils and
to estimate the intensity of their frustration. In the second
phase, ‘escalation’, the conflict becomes visible. During
the phase of escalation, teachers’ and pupils’ emotions can
become very intense. e phase of escalation is directly
followed by the phase of continuation. It is important to
realise that the intensity of emotions can continue over time
and that during the phase of continuation people involved
in the conict are likely to invest in opposition rather than
in rapprochement.
During this phase, it is possible that the emotions of the
people involved in the conict will hinder their critical
Counter-
narrative Arguments
Relativism
Cool-down
Content +
Relationship +
Content -
Relationship -
Figure 3: Reaction-reflection quadrant – model devised by Wansink and Patist

Teaching History 175 June 2019
The Historical Association72
investment of dierent perspectives and conicting sources.
However, according to Brandsma, in every conict, aer a
period of time people gradually invest less energy. is creates
opportunities to go to the phase of rapprochement. During
this phase, the intensity of the emotions is lower, and people
are more open for listening to each other. A pedagogy of multi-
perspectivity becomes possible and the deeper layers of the
conict can be discussed by critical investigation. However,
during the rapprochement phase, emotions can become tense
again, meaning that the conict might heat up once more. e
nal phase in conict is the phase of reconciliation in which
both parties trust each other again and can live co-operatively.
It should be noted that this phase is not always achieved.
Categorising teachers’ reactions
to a controversial remark
On Monday 16 November 2015 at noon, all schools in the
Netherlands were asked to fall silent for one minute to
commemorate the victims that had fallen during the co-
ordinatedterrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November. During
this attack, 368 people were injured and 130 people lost their
Figure 4: Relativism – how to start the conversation
Communication
Position in
time
and place
Position in
time
and place
Step 1:
Draw a circle in
the middle of the
white-board. Pose
that the circle
represents that
which we know.
To help teachers in the classroom start a conversation after a controversial remark, we will shortly describe a
pedagogy which Jaap Patist developed after the attacks on 11 September. This approach is in line with what
Goldberg and Schwarz have called the empathetic dual-narrative approach: it facilitates mutual affirmation
but does not directly stimulate critical thinking.
Step 3:
Tell the class that
the person on the
left will perceive
his or her ‘truth’
as the number six,
influenced by his or
her vantage point
in time and place.
The person on the
right will perceive
his or her ‘truth’
to be the number
nine, because of his
vantage point.
Step 2:
Then draw two
smaller circles as
shown. Point out
that from either
perspective you can
only see half of the
bigger circle.
Step 4:
State that in
order to see both
side of the circle
people have to
communicate
about their
perceptions and
acknowledge that
perceptions are
influenced by one’s
vantage point.
Step 5:
Finally, introduce
the theme you
want to discuss
with the class. Then
ask the class about
their perceptions
of the theme and
write these around
the circle.

Teaching History 175 June 2019
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lives – 89 of them at the Bataclan eatre. At the start of the day,
at a secondary school in a medium-sized city in the south of the
Netherlands, a teacher instructed her class to keep silence for one
minute. Aer the instruction, one pupil, who according to the
teacher had an Islamic background, said he did not want to keep
silence. e teacher was surprised by this reaction and asked for
his reason. e pupil responded ercely and emotionally that
he did not agree with the commemoration because, according
to him, the attacks were a Zionist and American conspiracy
against Muslims. When looking at this situation in terms of the
ve stages of conict, we propose that this pupils’ reaction can
be seen as the start of the phase of escalation.
is example served as a case-study that in-service teachers
discussed in a workshop about dealing with controversial
issues in the classroom during an academic teacher training
programme for history and social science teachers. The
programme involved three authors of this article – Wansink as
workshop leader, Savenije taking notes and Janssenswillen as
participant and observer. Approximately 40 teachers participated
in this session, at the start of which the teachers were divided into
small groups and asked to discuss and collect examples of tense
situations in their classrooms. Aer collecting these examples,
the entire group of teachers chose the case described above as a
focus for further investigation.
First, the introducer of the case was given the opportunity to
explain to all teachers the situation in more detail, but she did
not reveal her reaction aer the pupil suggested that it was
all a conspiracy against Muslims. Aerwards all the teachers
were given the opportunity to ask clarifying questions to
the teacher who introduced the case. Next, in small groups,
teachers discussed how they would react if this happened in
their own classroom. Finally, the dierent potential reactions
were collected and summarised. Subsequently, the session leader
placed the dierent potential teacher reactions into the model
shown in Figure 3.
The reaction-reflection quadrant
The model shown in Figure 3 was developed in order to
categorise dierent teachers’ reactions to conicting perspectives
in the classroom. It consists of two axes that, when combined,
distinguish four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a
teachers’ possible reaction to controversial pupil’s statements.24
e horizontal axis represents the eects on the relationship
of the teacher with the pupils and runs from ‘weakening the
relationship’ (negative) to ‘strengthening the relationship’
(positive). e vertical axis represents the content of the teachers’
reaction and runs from ‘discussing no content’ (negative) to
‘discussing content’ (positive). We will use the teachers’ input
during the workshop that we described above to illustrate how
the quadrant works. We have noticed, however, that the quadrant
can be applied to multiple cases as a way of thinking about
possible teachers’ reactions.
The cool-down quadrant
During the teacher workshop we discussed the case about the
pupil who believed the attacks in France were part of a conspiracy
against Muslims. e participating teachers proposed possible
teacher reactions to this tense classroom situation. We will now
describe the proposed teachers’ reactions categorised into the
‘cool-down’ quadrant. Several teachers said that they would
remove the pupil from the classroom in order to de-escalate and
retain order, but also to create time for themselves to think about
how to handle this particular pupil utterance. According to our
model, this teacher strategy focuses neither on strengthening
the relationship with the pupil, nor on discussing the content
of their statement. ese reactions can therefore be placed in
the cool-down quadrant. In this situation, the teachers’ fear
was one of ‘over-heating’ the classroom climate and losing
control. ey feared strong emotions would become polarised,
igniting hostility between pupils. In relation to the previously
described temporal phases of conict, this fear of escalation is
understandable because during the phase of escalation and the
phase of continuation emotions can be very intense. By removing
the pupil, the teacher indirectly communicates a norm to the
other pupils in the class, which might help to retain order and
peace in the classroom and may strengthen the relationship
with the whole class, enabling a less tense discussion of the
controversy with the remaining pupils. e relationship with
the removed pupil is disturbed, however, and has to be restored
aer the lesson.
Figure 5: Tips for identifying a strong argument
A strong argument:
1. addresses the rational argument instead of the person.
2. is based on facts rather than assumptions.
3. doesn’t give the impression that there are only two possibilities when
there may be more.
4. doesn’t appeal to emotion, tradition, popularity or patriotism.
5. doesn’t avoid responsibility by placing blame.
6. doesn’t present a caricature of a person or group.
7. Doesn’t rely on an extreme example to justify a position.

Teaching History 175 June 2019
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Presenting a counter-narrative
quadrant
Some teachers said, during the workshop, that their rst
reaction and emotion would be immediately to present a
counter-narrative to convince the pupil that their perspective
is not correct. e ingredients of such a counter-narrative
would be based on rational and historic specic criteria
for handling evidence and building arguments in order
to undermine the idea that the terrorist attack was a
Zionist conspiracy. This teaching strategy is based on
logical reasoning, yet we suggest that directly presenting a
counter-narrative may also disturb the relationship with the
pupil because the teacher dismisses the pupil’s perspective
immediately, resulting in a potentially damaged relationship
between teacher and pupil. During the phase of escalation,
the emotions of the pupils might conict with the teacher’s
approach that is (presented to be) rational (but oen also
very emotionally driven). is approach will eventually
increase the polarisation between the pupil and the teacher.
Therefore, these reactions could be placed in ‘counter-
narrative’ quadrant. Because emotions can be intense
during the phase of escalation, we think that this emotional
dimension is particularly important to reect on, leading us
to the quadrant of relativism.
Everyone is right: the
relativism quadrant
A third type of strategy the teachers mentioned was for the
teacher to ask the pupils to express their emotions and to
write down their position and arguments. In this manner,
the teacher focuses on strengthening relationships by taking
the pupils’ perspectives seriously. e teachers that proposed
this strategy said they would make sure the perspective of
the pupil that made the controversial remark, and also the
perspectives of the other pupils in the class, were listened
to carefully. is approach is intended to avoid harm to the
relationships between pupils and teacher. We argue that this
approach can be a rst step towards making contact between
the dierent perspectives. is is because it gives everyone an
opportunity to describe their own emotions and arguments.25
We note, however, that providing a stage for such arguments
can unintentionally increase the credibility of false claims,
such as the conspiracy theory about the terrorist attacks in
Paris. To avoid confrontation with the pupils, the teacher
does not give much attention to providing evidence for the
arguments. is approach might generate misconceptions
and epistemological or even moral relativism. Such an
approach is therefore in danger of failing to stimulate critical
thinking. However, in relation to the previously described
model of phases in conict, this rst step might be necessary
to move to the phase of rapprochement in order to take the
step towards argumentation in a later phase.
Quadrant: questioning and
arguments
During the workshop about dealing with controversial
issues in the classroom, several teachers stated that in
case of controversial utterances of pupils, they started by
making an inventory of all the dierent pupil perspectives.
By rst collecting all perspectives, the teachers wanted to
provide a space for pupils to express their emotions and
arguments. Subsequently, the teachers discussed the dierent
perspectives based on disciplinary criteria for inquiry and
reasoned argument. For example, they discussed concepts
such as fact and opinion, representativeness, and reliability.
e teachers’ idea behind presenting disciplinary criteria was
to create an opportunity to evaluate the pupils’ opinions and
arguments. Aspects of what we perceive as good arguments
can be found in Figure 5.26 Additionally, teachers hoped that
by shedding light on dierent perspectives and arguments
of the pupils in the classroom, pupils would be encouraged
to re-evaluate their position in response to their classmates’
perspectives and arguments that were dierent from their
own. We suggest that the teachers who mentioned this
strategy in the workshop were focusing both on content
and on strengthening the relationship with their pupils.
Therefore, we placed these reactions in the quadrant
‘arguments’.
We want to note, however, that this questioning strategy in
a tense classroom situation can have its drawbacks. When
taking into account our scrutiny of the model in action and
the assumptions of social identity theory and mortality
salience theory, we suggest that teachers should keep in
mind in which phase of the conict they start with analysing
the dierent pupils’ arguments. If the assumptions of social
identity theory and mortality salience theory are correct, it is
very likely that during the phase of escalation pupils want to
be strengthened in their stereotype ideas and in-group values.
is means that discussing multiple perspectives in this phase
of the conict can be counter-productive, and can even lead
to more polarisation and conrmation of stereotypes. Intense
emotions stimulate simplistic information processing and
limit pupils’ willingness to take someone else’s perspective.
Even during the phase of continuation, discussing dierent
perspectives might be very dicult for some pupils. ese
emotions should be recognised and acknowledged rst,
before engaging with the critical evaluation of dierent
pupils’ perspectives. We do not mean to say that all emotions
should be worked through in the classroom, but they do
need to be acknowledged in the presence of the pupils.
Only then might pupils be willing to listen to each other
and to discuss each other’s arguments. When looking at the
model, the conict is then in the phase of rapprochement
or reconciliation.
Discussion
In this article we have tried to combine two different
schemas, Colin Craig’s model of dierent phases in conict,
and our own reaction-reection quadrants. Both schemas
have been developed as practical tools to help teachers in
dealing with conict. In tense situations such as described
in our case-study, teachers have little or no time to think
thoroughly about how to react as there are many things
happening simultaneously. We think therefore that teachers
can benet from training and reection. e integration of
both models can help to problematise the various advantages
and disadvantages of dierent types of teachers’ reactions
over time. Reection will enable teachers to take a proactive
approach in teaching controversial issues and reduces the risk

Teaching History 175 June 2019
The Historical Association 75
of being overthrown by pupils’ responses. Moreover, our short
introduction of social identity theory and mortality salience
theory might help teachers to better grasp what is going on in
their classrooms.
e above examples show that depending on the phase of the
conict, dierent reactions by teachers might be appropriate.
It is a dicult task for teachers to directly assess the situation
and to choose the most appropriate reaction. In a split second,
teachers have to take into account all the consequences of their
reactions. is is made even harder by the fact that teachers
will oen also have strong emotional reactions. Nevertheless,
despite the fact that dierent teachers’ reactions are possible, it is
always important to invest in a good relationship with the pupils
because this is a precondition for discussing controversial issues.
An important aspect for teachers to keep in mind is that,
depending on the phase of the conict, emotions can hinder
both pupils’ and teachers’ rational thinking. Such rationality
is essential for critical thinking and for the willingness to
understand someone else’s perspective. Still, we propose that in
the face of fake news and ethical relativism, discussing content
and argumentation should go further than relativism, as not
all perspectives are equally epistemologically valid or morally
desirable.
Finally, it is important to note that teachers’ actions in dealing
with controversial issues are guided by emotions as well.
During our conversations with teachers, we oen heard that
they deliberately did not want to be explicit about their own
perspectives. ey strove for a ‘value-neutral’ position and
showed a willingness to discuss all different perspectives
(relativism, in Figure 3). However, when they were confronted
with controversial perspectives of pupils in the classroom, they
oen immediately presented a counter-narrative and limited the
perspectives that were tolerated.
We believe that teachers are engaged in what we refer to
as ‘normative balancing’, floating and doubting between
transferring values (i.e. imposing their own values) and value
communication, (i.e. discussing and interpreting different
values).27 Depending on whether or not teachers felt their
own values were at stake, based on their level of emotional
or moral engagement with the issues, teachers focused on
discussing dierent perspectives (relativism or argumentation)
or concentrated on transferring absolute values and imposing
their own values (cool-down or counter-narrative). We propose,
therefore, that when they are confronted with conflicting
perspectives in the classroom, and preferably beforehand as
well, teachers should be encouraged to reect on their own
identity, moral, and educational beliefs and on how these play
a role in their reactions. During these confrontations, teachers
will become more aware of their values and of their own
perceptions of truth.
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