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8/7/2023 127. RESOURCE DIVE: A Research-Based Model for Addressing Unplanned Controversial Issues in ClassRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
I listened to Charlot Cassar talk about the model in his co-authored, open access journal article, “Why teachers address unplanned controversial issues in the classroom” on the Visions of Education podcast. Then, I immediately read the paper. Now, I’m sharing the highlights with you!
Why? Locally and globally, there are always things happening that impact our students. Often, in highly emotional ways. This plus our school and larger cultural contexts can make it challenging to determine when to address an unplanned issue that arises in class. Teachers in Cassar, Oosterheert, & Meijer’s (2023) study described three types of “controversies”:
These situations happen all of the time. Some teachers (like the teachers invited to participate in this study) are more likely to choose to address these issues in class. Others are not. Importantly, the study noted that how teachers addressed a situation impacted their self-esteem and self-efficacy as a teacher. For leaders who are wary about telling teachers exactly what to address, this study’s model presents an opportunity to invite teachers to reflect on their reasons for choosing to address a specific issue or not. What’s in the model to understand teachers’ justifications for addressing unplanned controversial issues in the classroom?
Note: You can see the visual model (Figure 1) on p. 13 of the journal article. How can educators use this model in practice? After an event that impacts students in your school or district, invite teachers to use this model to think through each of the elements to explain why they chose to address it in the moment or not. (You could do this as a whole staff following a large event that impacted the whole community or use this in an individual coaching conversation with one teacher for an event that only impacted that class.) Here are some questions that teachers may want to consider in relation to the model:
Once teachers have reflected individually, you may want to pick a specific question to discuss as a whole staff or in teams. For example: Do we (as a staff) believe teachers should go beyond the syllabus or stick to it? I recommend using a discussion protocol for this. Moving forward, encourage teachers to consider this model as a reflective tool after an incident in class or in the moment as a decision-making tool. For the latter, I would recommend selecting ONE element or question from the list above that a teacher wants to ask themselves in the moment. Considering multiple elements in the moment would take too long. To help you create the space for these kinds of conversations with staff, I’m sharing my sequence of Staff Meeting Agendas with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 127 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of the time for Teacher Shit podcast. On this episode, we're talking about a research based model for addressing unplanned controversial issues in class. So as a leader, how do you support teachers to make these decisions when something pops up unexpectedly in class? How do you help a teacher think through either reflectively or ultimately in the moment? Whether to address that issue, given all of the things, given their personal context, given the context of the school or the state or the national climate, all these different things, given what the specific controversy is this is the episode that's going to help you think through that. 00:01:17 And we're going to use a model that actually comes from a recently published paper. It's a 2023 paper and the study was conducted in Europe. But it's really interesting how many parallels there are to the US context. All right, let's get into it. So let's dive right into the research that makes up this episode and why we're talking about this model. So the research behind the model will talk up through the model. And then in the last part of the episode, I'm wanna really talk through how you can actually use it. So how you as a leader can support educators to use this model in your practice, how you can use it as a tool to really invite reflection and also conversation team or staff wide in potentially like a staff meeting or a team meeting. So, OK, first, I wanna talk about the context with which I came about this. So I was listening to an episode of the Visions of Education podcast, which is great and phenomenal and you should totally listen to them. I know you're already a podcast listener and they were talking to Doctor Charlotte Cassar and Cassar. 00:02:21 I, I'm I apologize. I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but he is talking about how in his recently co-authored open access journal article, which is phenomenal because then that means you can read it and that's exactly what I did. I went on immediately and read the paper. So this is the episode where I literally an hour after just learning about the fact that the paper existed, well, maybe a little bit more two hours, I immediately was like, I need to record an episode. So this paper is called Why teachers address unplanned controversial issues in the classroom. And what's fascinating about this is that it really, it, it creates the model which I think is helpful, but it also gets at the why and I think that is for me anyway, is a new kind of frame. So I haven't really heard people discuss and get at like, what is that deep? Why that makes you decide in the moment I'm going to address it or I'm not going to address it. So what's interesting about the study is the folks in this study were selected and invited to participate in the study specifically because they were identified as people who were not shying away from controversial issues. They were the teachers who were definitely interested in, let's address it more often than not in the moment. 00:03:25 So they were kind of like, ok, so you do address things, therefore, we're gonna dig into why you made that specific decision and you're gonna tell us some moments where it came up, you're gonna tell us what the situation was and you're gonna go through like, what exactly was your kind of thinking either in the moment or reflectively and then they created a model based on that. So I think the larger context of this right is like things are always happening in classrooms, in schools, local and globally and nationally. And all the things there are events happening that impact our students, they might be hyper local, they might be, you know, globally, as I said, they affect all classrooms and all all places and often this shows up in very highly emotional ways. And the other piece of this too, the dynamic is important that I think the model reflects this. So that's it's important that we remember that teachers are also full people as well. So when we think about the context of teachers leaving the profession or teachers leaving the school or teachers, just the idea of teacher retention being such an important factor in overall like school success and district success, right? 00:04:32 And, and the success of the profession, right? This is a really interesting dynamic. I think that, that, that the model gets to and we'll get to the model in a second. But I think it is emotional both for the students and for the teacher. And all of those emotions are kind of factored into this decision of whether I'm going to do um you know, address this in this moment or whether I'm going to address it because I did address it and it didn't go well or something right now, do I address something else in the future or vice versa. I went really well and then I'm going to continue addressing it. Right. So I think this is really important to think about now. We have a, a lot of, I think different ideas as just human beings about controversies. What deems something controversial authors of this study came up with kind of three categories of what was described by participants as, as controversies. So mainstream controversies is the first one and this is stuff that's like in the public discourse, it's, you know, laws regarding things like immigration or health care or the economy. So like kind of big things politicians are talking about and it's, it's part of regular public discourse. 00:05:38 Then there's teacher initiated controversies and it's interesting that they phrased it this way. Um I I kind of skimmed through maybe why maybe that's present in the article. But they talk about this in relation to that moment when a student says something that I think in the their language is like discriminatory or stereotyping, um like an offensive comment and the teacher chooses that moment to respond, right, to say, basically, like take a stance and say that's not acceptable, right? We're crossing the line of what I would say is like a violation of dignity. So mainstream controversy is teacher initiated controversies and then the third is controversial pedagogy. And so that is again, interestingly framed. Uh That's when a teacher is reflecting on their own behavior in class. And I think one of the instances that was given as an example was that a student said something like, basically back to the teacher kind of like calling them out for, uh, something that they did that was maybe not ok, or that they perceived as kind of like, um, impeding their education or whatever. Right? The, the teacher kind of dismissed one of the students questions and the student was like, hey, well, then who do I go to with my questions? 00:06:45 So this is a moment where the teacher kind of reflects on their own behavior and deems it kind of like a controversial pedagogical moment. So it's really interesting, I I almost kind of think about that as like, I often frame it as like the apology category, right? Of like this is a moment where the teacher thought I was like, yep, I should apologize to the student or I should at least reflect on my behavior deeper. So these are the kinds of different situations, they're not all kind of like the public discourse, uh mainstream controversies is in that first category, like something like controversial pedagogy is, is literally just like how you interact with students. So I think that it's really interesting as well that this was kind of part of the conversation. So this these situations happen all the time and we want to think through and kind of I, I think this model is a great opportunity to help teachers think through. Are you gonna respond? Are you not gonna respond? And I think it's really hard to do in the moment to use something like this model in full because you have a few seconds to decide, right? So how do we use this model to think through? Maybe in a reflective way? 00:07:47 What were the moments that we chose or chose not to respond? Like we responded in a moment. How did it go? Why did we choose? How does that inform future decisions perhaps? And then also kind of thinking about what is something that really stood out during that reflection that we can kind of use moving forward. So let's first look at the model, the model and this is their model is called the model to understand teachers justifications for addressing unplanned controversial issues in the classroom. There's kind of three core pieces, they kind of like bold this and you can see the visual, it's on page 13 of the journal article which I will link in the blog post. It is figure one. So sometimes it pops up at the very top, you can see all the figures but kind of more bold and more central to the model are the first three kind of elements or components. One is immediacy. So the urgency of the situation and there are some different pieces there. So they, they said there's actually three aspects of immediacy and they kind of relate to some of these other elements as well. One is pedagogical potential or kind of like this teachable moment opportunity. So what is the pe pedagogical potential of me addressing this right now? 00:08:50 The other is kind of like the wider context and the specific event? So how does this particular event influence my decision? Like I might typically address a lot of things but maybe not this one or maybe this one even though I don't typically address a lot of things. So how does this specific event play into things? And then also the third piece is the need to address the situation to move on and kind of get back to the planned curriculum. So a participant had a quote was like, otherwise they just fester, right? So this idea of like if we don't address it, there's going to be this kind of emotional build up and even like emotional outbursts or frustration with the teacher for not addressing it, right? Like we need to actually work through this talk through this thing, through this give space for this, even if it's not a discussion, right? Even if it's just for the processing to just acknowledge that this happened in order to even get back to you at some day, it doesn't need to be the same day, but at some point to get back to the lesson. So it's kind of like, uh I think the the author was saying, you know, it, it almost is sometimes selfish as a teacher to be like, well, I need to get through all this stuff. 00:09:54 So in order to get through this stuff, I'm going to pause and I'm going to address it so that ultimately I can get back to, to my kind of curriculum or business as usual. So it's a really interesting kind of frame, particularly for people who might be reticent to address this if you kind of frame it in that way, or people can think through it in that way. Um The the next piece was past experiences. So we have the immediacy of the moment and then we have the past experiences of the individual teacher. And then the third piece is future orientations. So the past experiences of the teacher could be like what in relation to that issue, but also what in relation to like being a student myself. Like how did my teachers treat me? How I I know one participant was talking about like when my teacher did this thing, it actually was really not cool and I want very much to be different from that teacher. And so it's kind of like your past is very much informing your decisions, right? And so just to kind of honor that and name, right? As teachers reflecting kind of name what that is, what are the past experiences that are kind of coming up as I think about making this decision or reflectively as I did make this decision. 00:10:55 What kind of influence that and also future orientation. So this is super interesting, I think it's the desired state of being for yourself as a teacher, like who's the teacher that you wanna be? And also your students who are the students that you want to kind of, what kind of student do you want to support? Who do you want them to be in the world? What kind of skills do you want them to have? How do you want them to interact with others or lead or you know, any of those things? So kind of what's your desired future orientation? And so this might be, I think one that specific example about apologizing to the student or kind of like taking a moment to reflect critically on their, their pedagogy or their behavior in that moment. It was like, oh, I want to be a teacher who is capable of apologizing to a student, right? Or I want to be a teacher who is reflective of that and not just to say I am always right. So it's just really fascinating, I think for me than that, that piece. So I immediately past experiences, future orientations, if nothing else, I think definitely have teachers reflect on that and maybe one of those pieces in, in the moments, but also there's all this other stuff, right? Because that's, that's overly simple. 00:11:57 And so the model includes more including emotions, those are the feelings of teachers or students and our students as a result of the issue? Or I think this is also interesting, they say the emotions that come up when a teacher does not address the issue. So what were kind of the emotional considerations when the teacher was making the decision whether to address or not address this issue during class? Were you thinking about what would happen if you didn't? Right. What would be the emotional response of you or the students be if you didn't? Super interesting question to ask teachers? The next piece is personal beliefs. So that's the teacher's personal beliefs and values. It's really interesting in the language they use in the article they talk about this desire to preserve the self so that teachers have this desire and need to really preserve themselves. We think about this in the workplace, right? We, we kind of come to work and then we're supposed to leave ourselves at home, this, this myth that we perpetuate. And I've talked about this so much in the podcast that like this idea of neutrality, right? And we're like, oh, the teacher doesn't exist as a full human being as a teacher, right? 00:13:00 Like that's just not, that's not sustainable when we think about teacher well being, right? You need to be able to bring your full self to work and also recognize that you're a teacher and you have that like relational power dynamic and you have the professional responsibility of being a teacher and not like, I think how often people use the word indoctrinate. Of course, we're not trying to indoctrinate anyone, but we do want to make sure that we don't feel like we are completely doing the opposite of what our core humanity wants us to do. Right. We're probably gonna leave the profession if that's, if that's the case. So I think, I think that's just really interesting to think about and have teachers reflect on what are those personal beliefs and values? Do you feel like you can preserve yourself? Did you preserve yourself in the moment? Did you not? And, and are you still kind of thinking about that? The other piece here is professional beliefs. And so we think about professional beliefs, these are kind of like what are the broader aims of education? So there is, I think that's a wonderful opportunity for kind of a whole conversation, staff wider team wide about what that is and where do we kind of align or not? 00:14:05 But there's a great participant, quote in this article and the participant says, I realized this is a quote, I realize how toxic it is that in schools, we say politics are not for the classroom, if they are not for the classroom, for what are they or sorry for, where are they? And then he continues on to say, or I'm I'm not sure what the gender of the person was actually, but this person, this participant continues on to say it is a disservice from the education system not to give them the right tools to be proper engaged, democratic citizens, which I just think is a really interesting reflection. I mean, I would agree with it, but I, I also think to be able to invite teachers to kind of think through this question for themselves. What would they come up with, would they come up with something similar? But they come up with something totally different? Like, what is that belief? I think that was, is such a powerful question to ask if we choose any of these, right? I think, think about the ones that your teachers and yourself would find the most interesting to, to discuss and facilitate a discussion on um or even just a one on one reflection for teachers. The next piece is task perception. 00:15:08 And so this is like, what are the practical implications for addressing this issue? So there's kind of multiple components here, there's three main ones subject fit. So how does this actually fit into my subject area? So if it's like social studies, it's like, oh, ok, I'm, I'm examining like a current event and I'm connecting it to historical set. Like, yep, a lot of times people will say like science, math, you know, art, whatever it is, I like this doesn't fit. So can we find a fit or do I just not see it as a fit and therefore that determines my decision, interesting to be able to kind of reflect on that related. I think another piece is the related to that idea of um professional belief, you know, that idea of going beyond the syllabus. So do we have the ability as teachers to go beyond the syllabus? Like? Is this something that I think is helpful for students? And so some folks were thinking about in the study that teaching students the thinking skills and the research skills that they're going to need as youth and adults to face similar situations in the future to them was part of who they wanted to be as teachers. 00:16:11 It was part of kind of connected to that future orientation of who they wanted students to be. It was aligned to their professional belief of what teaching is and what school should be. And so therefore, as the task perception, it was like, OK, yes, having this conversation helps us go beyond the syllabus and that is exactly aligned to kind of all these other components. So thinking about that, I think also is helpful. Like, do we go beyond the source? Is that helpful? Is it helpful in this particular moment? Great question to ask as a reflection. Finally, the third kind of component of task reception is for student wellness, right? So how is student well being specifically thinking about like nurturing a um a quote unquote safe space, that's the phrase they use. But like this idea of perceived safety in schools, right? Is that valuable? Right? Like I mean, obviously it's valuable like is it valuable to address the issue in the moment? Will that enhance that perception of safety and well-being for students? Right? Is it valuable to do this in service of that student well being in the moment. So I think that's another question like is this going to impact them or not if I do? 00:17:13 Is it going to impact students well-being if I don't? Right, like, what are those? And then finally, the last piece is the context which I think we've talked about before. But I think also just helpful to bring up again and invite to just think about what is the context both in your classroom, which I think is huge. So it's not just, you know, the, the broader climate of the state you live in or the the county you live in or whatever, but it's like the school climate itself. What's that climate like? Do we talk about this stuff normally in this school? But then also at a classroom level, if you've never invited student voices before, you're not going to have a very open classroom climate as it's called in the research. And therefore students are gonna be like, uh I don't know what, like it's going to be a very different conversation and it might inform the teacher saying like, actually, no, I'm not even though if I had built the foundation previously, I would maybe go into this. I haven't. And so that is actually why I shut it down because we don't have an open classroom climate built already. So I'm not gonna address it in this moment. So that's also super interesting. And I think of course, informs, you know, wanting to build up that foundation so that teachers are not having to choose not to address it because we haven't built that foundation yet, right? 00:18:23 We want to build the foundation so that we can address things when they do pop up in unplanned scenarios. So let me really quickly and I think I've hinted at this through, but how let's talk about how educators can use this model in practice. So reflectively, I think the first way to do this is just invite teachers either in a one on one, if there's a particular event that affected students in that classroom alone, like there's something like uh maybe one of those like pedagogical pieces, teacher says something students are upset or something, let's dig into that, right? Or this particular student had a conflict with another student in this class, right? It is class specific. So think through in maybe a one on one coaching conversation with that teacher have a conversation about the model and the list of questions you can ask alternatively if there is a current event that affected your local community, uh even nationally. And you just see that students and teachers are really affected by this. Let's use this to kind of go through the model as a team or even whole staff meeting to reflect on why certain teachers address and certain teachers did not address the issue in their class in the moment as it came up. 00:19:28 So here are some questions you might want to consider and you can kind of think about how they relate to the model as well. Was there a pa this is reflective language? But you could always turn it into kind of like thinking about a potential event in addressing it in the future. Was there a pedagogical potential in addressing it right away? So again, that's immediacy. Did I need to address it before students could engage the plan lesson? Again, immediacy. What past experiences either with this topic or as a student myself informed my decision, past experiences. Who do I want to be as a teacher? And how did this impact my decision? Future orientations? Who do I want my students to be? What do I want them to be able to do in the world? And how did those desires impact my decision, future orientations? Did I see a connection to my subject area? That's task perception. Do I believe teachers should go beyond the syllabus or stick to it again, task perception. And I would also say that kind of connects to professional beliefs as well. How did I think talking about it would impact my students well-being and perceptions of safety in my classroom. 00:20:40 Again, task perception. So once teachers have reflected individually and of course, you can add to that list, you can add questions. I just kind of came up with some that I thought were helpful. You might wanna pick one question to discuss as a whole staff. For example, I really like the idea of like, do we believe teachers should go beyond the syllabus or stick to it? I think that would generate a ton of great conversation. And I highly recommend using a discussion protocol for this, whether it is written like a gallery walk or write around or it is um you know, like a pad or something digital, you could also use like a verbal one. So we are going to use like circle to make sure everyone's voice is heard or something and then moving forward, encourage teachers to kind of remember this reflection. Remember this model, consider this model, maybe give everyone a hand out of the model or a list of the questions. And then as incidents occur later on, they can continue to use it individually to reflect either in coaching conversations or on their own or in their with their team or in the moment as a decision making tool. Again for this piece, it would be a ton of time to go through all of the elements and all of the questions. So what I would do is have the teacher, each individual teacher is gonna be different, select one element or even more specifically and even better. 00:21:49 I think one question from that list or from a list that you co create with them that a teacher wants to ask themselves in the moment. So if there's one question, right, they have five seconds to decide what is the one question they want to ask. Right. For me personally, it might be who is the teacher? I want to be right? What is going to make me feel good at the end of the day of like, I feel very aligned to my values. I feel like I'm doing good in the world. I feel like, you know, one of my core values is justice. Like I'm aligned in justice. Like what is the decision that helps me be aligned with that? So that would be me personally. But it could be literally any of the questions for you. I think this is going to be a game changing tool for people who are like, I don't even know where to start the conversation and maybe things are really intense at my school and we're very like politicized or whatever. Like this just opens the conversation for reflection. It opens the conversation for discussion as a team, as a staff, even just for that individual reflective moment before we get to the staff conversations, I think this is huge. I highly recommend you going to the blog post, but this is exactly what I did when I listened to the episode on Vision of Education, I was like, I need to read and see the visual. 00:22:53 I need to read the paper and see the visual. And that was really helpful for me thinking about it coming, coming all together. Although I do think if you're driving or something and you and you kind of lose sight of of this episode in the blog post, I think you have all the core pieces just hearing this now. But if you want to come back to this, uh Lindsey Beth lions dot com slash blog slash 12 sevens, you're just gonna remember the episode number. It's always Lindsay beth lions dot com slash blog slash 127. And to support you with free resource, what I think I'm gonna do is link the staff meeting agenda series because that's all about creating that foundation for a conversation both for your staff and then ultimately, so the staff can take it and go use it with the students. So that again, we don't have teachers saying well, I haven't set the foundation. Therefore, I am not going to pursue this when it comes up in the moment, even if all the other kind of elements were yeses because of that one, I'm not gonna go for it. So we want to make sure we have that foundation set and we want all teachers to feel equipped with the knowledge, skills and practice of setting the foundation. 00:23:54 So I'll go ahead and link that in again. Lindsey be lines dot com slash blog slash 127. I will see you again next week. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist, anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
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