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    Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights: Training pack for teachers
    Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights: Training pack for teachers
    Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights: Training pack for teachers
    Ebook173 pages1 hour

    Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights: Training pack for teachers

    By David Kerr and Ted Huddleston

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A professional development programme for teachers, designed to support and promote the teaching of controversial issues in schools in Europe.

    This publication offers practical guidance, support and training to help strengthen the handling of controversial issues in schools and other educational settings. It seeks to help teachers, leaders and trainers to effectively address controversial issues as part of their everyday professional practice. This is essential if education is to equip children and young people with the competences needed to protect and defend human rights, democracy and the rule of law, to participate effectively and to live peacefully with others in our culturally diverse societies.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCouncil of Europe
    Release dateJan 22, 2021
    ISBN9789287190338
    Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights: Training pack for teachers
    Author

    David Kerr

    David Kerr MBChB, DM, FRCP, FRCPE, is a UK trained endocrinologist and has recently joined Sutter Health after spending almost a decade as a researcher/innovator in Santa Barbara, CA (https://www.davidkerrmd.com/). This began in 2014, with David’s appointment as Director of Research and Innovation at Sansum Diabetes Research Institute before moving to the Diabetes Technology Society as their lead for Digital Health last year. David has now joined Sutter Health as Senior Investigator, Diabetes Research and Digital Health Equity. David’s recent research has focused on offering wearable digital health technologies such as continuous glucose monitors to marginalized and historically excluded communities to help understand the potential value of real time physiological data. He has published more than 400 articles, commentaries and opinion pieces as well as co-authoring the first two books focusing on diabetes and digital health. David’s research has also included the use of “food-as-medicine” for adults with or at-risk of diabetes. As part of this research, increasing participation in clinical research by traditionally hard to reach communities has been achieved through the creation of specially trained “Community Scientists” from the same communities. David also has an adjunct position in the Dept of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Rice University in Houston Texas, and recently co-Chair of an NIDDK working group looking at the impact of innovation on furthering research into the heterogeneity of diabetes. You can follow David on ‘X’ at @godiabetesmd.

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      Book preview

      Teaching controversial issues through education for democratic citizenship and human rights - David Kerr

      PART A

      Scoping paper –

      Exploring the challenges

      and developing competence

      Introduction

      Purpose

      Learning how to engage in dialogue with people whose values are different from one’s own and to respect them is central to the democratic process and essential for the protection and strengthening of democracy and for fostering a culture of human rights.

      Yet in Europe young people do not often have an opportunity to discuss controversial issues in school because they are seen as too challenging to teach, for example in the case of issues such as extremism, gender violence, child abuse or sexual orientation. Unable to voice their concerns, unaware of how others feel or left to rely on friends and social media for their information, young people can be frustrated or confused about some of the major issues which affect their communities and European society today. In the absence of help from school, they might have no reliable means of dealing with these issues constructively and no one to guide them.

      This Scoping paper examines the major challenges of teaching controversial issues in European schools and suggests ways in which these challenges may be met. It focuses in particular on the need to increase the confidence and competences of teachers in addressing controversial issues in their classrooms and across their schools.

      These suggestions form the basis of a series of recommendations for the development of a new training pack on the teaching of controversial issues, comprising the Scoping paper (Part A) and a Programme of training activities (Part B). These are intended to be accessible and have application across Europe and have already been successfully piloted with teachers, trainers and facilitators in a number of European countries.

      Approach

      The Scoping paper promotes an open and collaborative approach to teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on self-reflection and thoughtful action. Teachers are encouraged to reflect on the way their personal beliefs and values affect their professional attitude towards and practice in the handling of contentious material.

      It also emphasises the creation of safe environments in classrooms and schools where controversial issues can be discussed and debated openly by students, supported and facilitated by teachers. Such environments help students to deal with differences, defuse tension and encourage non-violent means of conflict resolution. They encourage self-reflection and listening to others, promote intercultural dialogue, give minorities a voice, build mutual tolerance and respect, and foster a more critical approach to information received from the media.

      The context

      Public concern arising in the aftermath of a number of high-profile incidents of violence and social disorder in different European countries has combined with new thinking in education for democracy and human rights to make the handling of controversial issues in schools a matter of educational urgency.

      Firstly, incidents such as the 2011 London riots, the 2011 Norway hate crimes and the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in 2015 have prompted a wholescale review of the part played by schools in the moral and civic development of young people, an imperative which has been echoed across Europe.

      Secondly, European policy on education for democracy and human rights has shifted from reliance on textbook exercises and theoretical knowledge to an emphasis on active and participatory learning and engagement with real-life issues. There is a growing consensus that democratic citizenship, respect for human rights and intercultural understanding are learned more effectively through doing than accumulating facts – just knowing. Accordingly, curricula for democratic citizenship and human rights education across Europe have been opened up to new, unpredictable and controversial types of teaching

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