The End-Purpose of Teaching Social Sciences and the Curricular Inclusion of Social Problems

Abstract

The most recent scientific literature on the treatment of social problems or controversial social questions in the social sciences classroom and their inclusion into curricula emphasizes the need to introduce students into large-scale social debates where different points of view exist, different interests are at stake, and where it is desirable that they construct their own opinions in that respect from a critical and reasoned perspective [...]

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

“…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.…”