Conference Agenda

Most Chilean teachers in public schools teach in marginalised contexts. Social segregation, racism, drug trafficking and gender violence are some of the problems they face every day in their communities (Matus et al., 2019). The situation is even more complex when the curriculum prescribes teaching these problems, which become difficult knowledge (MINEDUC, 2019). Teachers must confront the difficult issues in the school subjects (e.g., social studies, citizenship education, science, philosophy). This request interacts with their personal experiences with different forms of violence (Kim, 2021; Sonu, 2023). In short, teaching decisions are inserted in a complex assemblage that interests the field of citizenship education (CE), which is the focus of this research.

In the last decades, teaching difficult and controversial issues at school has represented a relevant topic for researchers in CE (Barton & Ho, 2021; Pace, 2021). Most studies have addressed teachers' beliefs, student's cognitive skills, and teaching methodologies (Journell, 2022). Recently, some scholars have been interested in studying the relationship between teachers' personal experiences and pedagogical practices (e.g., Sonu, 2023; Zembylas & Loukadis, 2021). The research agenda in the area has been developed under a humanistic and modern paradigm (Zembylas, 2022). As a result, the affective and embodied dimensions of teaching difficult knowledge have been unrepresented.

This study aims to analyse the affects produced by the encounter between teachers' experiences with violence and teaching difficult knowledge; from the new materialism theory (Barad, 2007) and the posthumanism (Braidotti, 2019). I understand the affects from Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) definition, as forces or energies produced by the encounter between human (e.g., students, teachers, families) and non-human bodies (e.g., social discourses, materialities, nature), changing the ability to act. These changes can manifest in different intensities and directions. Thus, these theoretical frameworks allow to understand the teaching of difficult knowledge, considering the embodied and affective dimensions that need more exploration.

This research contributes to the field of citizenship education, and particularly for those interested in teaching difficult and controversial issues in school contexts. In particular, at least three contributions could be named: first, teaching decisions depends on teachers' personal and affective relationships with curricular content; second, it contributes to understanding teaching difficult knowledge from a complex and holistic theoretical perspective; and third, it allows us to recognise the value of affects and corporeality on creating alternative teaching methodologies to face these issues in challenging contexts.

Processes of globalisation have drawn us into an increasingly interconnected world, yet stark divisions continue to exist in conflict and post-conflict societies, where minority and majority populations are involved in deep-seated ethnonational and religious conflicts. Among such divided communities engaged in violent conflict, schooling is often characterised by the existence of separate, parallel education systems divided along ethnoreligious lines. Although such segregated schooling often perpetuates conflict by maintaining separate ethnonational identities (e.g., Davies 2010; Fontana 2016), we must not overlook possibilities for religious education to promote peace and develop cosmopolitan identities and citizenships within societies facing protracted political conflict (Loukaidis & Zembylas 2017; Papastephanou 2005). This potential is particularly relevant when we consider multicultural and/or international curricula in faith-based schools serving religious minorities, such as Israel’s colonial-international Church schools (e.g., Levy & Monterescu 2022). This comparative ethnographic study of colonial-international Church schools in two of Israel’s contested cities (the Armenian School in Jerusalem and the Scottish School in Jaffa, both of which use the British-based International GCSE) unpacks how international education shapes the citizenship practices of local ethnoreligious minority youth against the background of protracted conflict and institutionalised discrimination against non-Jewish minorities.

In Israel, a sector-based education system keeps most students religiously and linguistically segregated, with the Jewish majority and non-Jewish minorities attending separate schools. Israeli government policies maintain large inequities between Jewish and Arab systems to control and subordinate the Palestinian minority. Schools within the Arab sector are underfunded, overcrowded, short-staffed, and subject to surveillance, with the curriculum controlled and censored to delegitimize and exclude minority narratives and youth identities. Consequently, large achievement gaps exist between Jewish and non-Jewish students (e.g., Nasser & Abu-Nimer 2022). To circumvent the inequitable Arab state school system, many ethnoreligious minorities have turned to private Christian schools, several of which utilise international curricula.

The greatest expansion of international education is now occurring in local markets, where families aim to provide their children with perceived economic advantage (e.g., Hayden 2013) through the accrual of international (Resnik 2018) and cosmopolitan capital (Igarashi & Saito 2014). Besides providing enhanced access to academic and economic opportunities within global markets, internationalisation in education strives towards education for global citizenship (Ortloff et al. 2012), which materialises in multiple forms, including cosmopolitan and advocacy models (Oxley & Morris 2013). Given the exclusion of Arab-Palestinian identity in the Israeli curriculum, as Arab-Palestinian youth seek alternative ways of collective belonging (Pinson 2008), global citizenship education has the potential to offer attachments to a global society which may compensate for the lack of recognition within the Israeli national narrative (Goren, Maxwell & Yemeni 2019). In recent decades, globalisation processes have encouraged youth to (re)imagine and (re)produce such post-national identities challenging traditional conceptions of nationhood and national identity (e.g., David, Dolby & Rizvi 2010).

Although the relationship between the internationalisation of education and global citizenship is the subject of much contemporary scholarship, how such global citizenship discourses unfold within international schools serving marginalised ethnoreligious groups remains an under-researched aspect of international education’s increasingly widespread reach. The present study addresses this lacuna, as it grapples with the multiple subjectivities circulating within the Armenian and Scottish schools. Examining how minority youth in these colonial-international Church schools negotiate citizenships on local, global, and transnational scales, I consider the novel forms of global citizenship which emerge within a contentious sociopolitical environment. The research draws on and contributes to the anthropology of education, postcolonial sociology, comparative education, and conflict studies, calling attention to contemporary questions surrounding identity and citizenship in an era when divisions within cities may be wider and more perilous than those across oceans.

Liberal democracy is in crisis (Sant, 2021). The deepening of structural inequalities, ideological polarization, and advancing neo-fascist discourses are concrete manifestations of this scenario (Askanius & Mylonas, 2015). In the educational field, efforts have been made to address this panorama through education for democratic citizenship (EDC) (Eurydice, 2018; UNESCO, 2016). An ECD pedagogical response is the discussion of controversial issues (DCI) (Cassar, 2023; Ho et al., 2017), where teachers and students exchange perspectives based on empathetic listening and deliberation on matters of difficult consensus. Migration policies, hate speech in social media, and the State´s role in facing wealth concentration are examples of controversial issues that spark hated debates in the public space.

Researchers in EDC argue that DCI among school students has high educational potential (Ho et al., 2017). In addition, they maintain that DCI promotes the acquisition of civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes for democratic life (Kohlmeier & Saye, 2014; Misco, 2016). They also suggest that schools are ideal contexts for discussing controversial issues since there is more social and ideological diversity than students usually find in their social circle of belonging (Parker, 2010).

Based on the above, DCI in the school classroom has represented a relevant area of research for citizenship education (e.g., Hess & McAvoy, 2015; Journell, 2022; Wansink et al., 2023). Recently, Theory & Research in Social Education, one of the most important journals in the area, has published that "Why teachers address unplanned controversial issues in the classroom" (Cassar et al. 2023) was the most downloaded article of 2023. This data shows the considerable interest in this topic.

Unfortunately, studies report that DCI in a school context is rare and is concentrated in social studies. The teachers' lack of knowledge and training experiences and the fear of the reactions of students, families, and administrators are among the main reasons for their low presence (Cassar et al., 2023). However, recent literature has shown that discussion of public controversies arises spontaneously in the classroom. Discussing controversial issues at school occurs as unplanned and unforeseen experiences to which the literature needs to pay more attention (Cassar et al., 2023; Pace, 2021).

Considering this background, we set out to systematically review empirical studies that have deployed DCI among primary and secondary students in different school areas (e.g., sciences, arts, social studies). The questions that guided our review were: What findings about students learning in discussing controversial issues at schools are reported on empirical research? What unforeseen situations during the discussion are informed by the literature?

Our review contributes to the field of EDC and to academics interested in DCI in the school space first because it maps the production of knowledge in the area and recognizes research gaps second because it identifies research and findings from different school areas, not just social studies. Third, because informs teacher educators and teachers in preparation and practice about the characteristics and challenges of teaching strategies for DCI and contributes to their institutional and didactic decisions.

The Human Development Index shows that almost 60% of countries ranked 'low' on the HDI have experienced conflict since the 1990s (The World Bank, 2005). It is argued that education and conflict influence each other and that this relationship is considered to be complex and multifaceted (The World Bank, 2005). It is also explained that education plays an essential role in post-conflict reconstruction, as conflicts often flare up again (The World Bank. 2005). This is why Fiedler et al. (2016) refer to the importance of a multidimensional peacebuilding approach. Approaches to education in emergency and conflict settings and post-conflict reconstruction are widely discussed in the literature. Particular attention is paid to specific challenges (UNESCO, 2011), such as humanitarian risks, infrastructural conditions (Jones & Naylor, 2014), self-sufficiency issues (Sommers, 2002) and forced migration (UNHCR, 2014). Pedagogical challenges, such as building student-teacher relationships, classroom management, creating safe spaces, large and consistent groups, and dealing with heterogeneity in terms of achievement, are often mentioned but not explored further (Symeonidis et al., 2023). Our paper aims to further unfold the multiple complexities of post-war educational challenges in the first five years after severe violent conflict. Our study is set in Mosul, Iraq, a city that has been affected by conflict for many years and is just recovering from the occupation of the city by the terrorist militia ISIS from 2014 to 2017. In this paper, therefore, we analyse the different pedagogical challenges that teachers face in the context of conflict in Iraq and the pedagogical approaches that teachers use in schools. Therefore, we asked the following research question: "What pedagogical challenges do teachers describe in conflict contexts?" and "What pedagogical concepts do teachers describe as essential in conflict contexts?".