Teaching Controversial Issues and Social Problems from an Integrated Perspective

Effects of a teacher training programme on historical awareness skills, controversial issues and gender in secondary education

“…Historical awareness as an interpretative filter [11] or temporal compass [12] is an interesting strategy in teacher education to address controversial issues, allowing the possibility of avoiding surprises and dealing with them appropriately when they arise spontaneously in the classroom or are deliberately raised on the basis of curriculum development [25,36] . In all of these topics, gender and its diversity, conflicts or symbolic and physical violence are issues inherent to all historical societies, which is why they must be visible and intentionally dealt with in the teaching of social sciences from interdisciplinary integrated models and perspectives [27,[32][33][34] . In this sense, in order to avoid "exclusionary impartiality", "exclusionary neutrality" or "impartial neutrality", we believe it is advisable to adopt the position of "committed impartiality", operationalizing historical thinking and multi-perspective in the teaching-learning process.…”

“…Teacher education should provide the necessary theoretical and practical tools to address the pressing social issues of our contemporary world [22][23][24] , usually arising spontaneously in the social sciences classroom [25] . From a holistic point of view and with an integrated and transdisciplinary perspective, Ortega-Sánchez [26,27] argues for the need to include social problems, controversial issues and socially live issues in the curriculum and in educational practice in social sciences. Consequently, the didactic treatment of controversial issues and the establishment of strategies to promote historical thinking skills in students should necessarily be oriented towards the analysis of the public uses of history, through the development of historical awareness, and involved in the construction of a critical and democratic historical culture.…”

Integrative models of Education for Citizenship (Handbook) - 2nd edition

“…After delving into the necessary epistemological discussion of integrated STEM education (26), we have developed a theoretical framework for integrated STEM education (also valid for STEAM) aimed at the competency development of students from a humanistic vision (27). To this end, we propose the need to address three interrelated levels of commitment (theories, methods, and goals) that are coherent, justify and support an integrated, inclusive, and humanistic STE(A)M education.…”

La enseñanza de temas controvertidos y problemas sociales: análisis comparativo de las percepciones del futuro profesorado iberoamericano de ciencias sociales

“…La enseñanza de temas controvertidos, definidos como cuestiones que suscitan puntos de vista opuestos y generan desacuerdos racionales, tiene como objetivo promover la conciencia crítica sobre los problemas sociales y desarrollar las competencias ciudadanas necesarias para abordarlos. En este sentido, la problematización curricular o el tratamiento didáctico de problemas sociales favorecen la profundización comprensiva de la realidad social, el contraste de perspectivas argumentadas a partir del análisis crítico de las fuentes y narrativas sociales, la racionalidad electiva para la toma de decisiones en contextos problemáticos y el compromiso social como componente integral del proceso democrático (Ortega-Sánchez, 2022a). Desde esta perspectiva, Santisteban (2019), a partir de Hess (2008Hess ( , 2009, afirma que "los temas controvertidos ponen el acento en todas aquellas estrategias (…), [donde] la controversia, el debate, el contraste de opiniones, la argumentación, el conflicto y el consenso son las bases de una educación democrática auténtica (Santisteban, 2019, p. 64).…”