Für Lehrende
UNIC 6: Teaching on Controversial Issues – Avoiding the pitfalls
In the workshop you will meet university educators of partner-universities of the UNIC-Alliance, who are based in: Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. In this international setting the participants will be introduced to a tool that can be used when preparing to teach controversial issues.
Teaching controversial issues (sometimes called “sensitive issues”) is becoming an increasingly contentious issue within higher education. Society is increasingly distinguished by antagonistic tensions due to i.e. the visibility of large-scale international conflicts, the polemical rhetoric in social media, the erosion of civility in political discourse, and medias obsession with conflict. This tension is finding its way into higher education when students adamantly are expressing polemical and disruptive positions during lessons, especially those that deal with controversial issues. Sometimes these lessons risk becoming too controversial, with conflicts between students or with the teacher as a result.
Therefore, how teachers prepare themselves to teach controversial issues effectively and in a way that mitigates the risk of conflict has become an increasingly relevant concern. Even so, many teachers express that they have received little or no training in how to address controversial issues in their teaching.
For that reason, during the workshop the participants will be given the opportunity to hone their skills in teaching controversial issues. Specifically, the participants will engage with a tool that Portin has developed that highlights the pitfalls that a teacher might fall into when teaching controversial issues. Portin will present the tool, and the participants are invited to discuss how the pitfalls that the tool highlight are expressed in their own fields of knowledge.
The workshop will take place online and be held in English (lingua franca).