Teaching contested narratives and controversial issues

Contextualised approaches from Cyprus, Denmark, Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Norway

Abstract

The main question of this book is how we can teach controversial issues and contested narratives in post-conflict and diverse societies. Our aim is to provide teachers and students with ideas and tools for contextual reflection and didactic planning. Confronted with the current increasing political polarisation and threats to democracy, such as disinformation, fake news and online propaganda, teachers are challenged to deal with a great range of contested narratives and controversial issues in the classroom. Such issues can appear in several school subjects, but this book gives priority to examples from history education, religious education, and citizenship education. The primary target group is teachers and student teachers across Europe and beyond, who are looking for ways to combine theoretical perspectives with pedagogical approaches in the teaching of controversial issues and contested narratives.

A specific point of attention in the book is to show how controversial issues and contested narratives are interrelated, since multiple, contested, and sometimes competing, narratives often are involved in controversial issues. In schools, teachers must handle controversial issues and competing narratives daily, related to the past or to current situations – or to both. As the book is based on a 3-year Erasmus+ project, it provides examples from five different national contexts: Cyprus, Denmark, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Norway. Based on the experiences from this international cooperation, we highlight how the specific national, geographic, cultural, political, and religious contexts have an impact on which issues are perceived as controversial, and why specific narratives are powerful or contested in classrooms and society.