Toward Discussion Facilitation That Enacts Collective Care. A Response to “Teaching Dobbs Where Divisive Concepts and Abortion Are Restricted”

For both teacher candidates and teacher educators, facilitating discussions of contested issues in hyper-polarized climates remains a heavy lift. This response to “Teaching Dobbs…” celebrates the successes apparent in Geller’s team’s work and identifies key features that supported it. While cautioning readers against adopting avatar rehearsals elsewhere, I distill four themes of planning and enactment that show clear promise for broad transference in teacher education. Drawing from research exploring the interfaces of justice-oriented, practice-based, and democratic social studies scholarship, I offer pedagogical and logistical considerations for other teacher educators and researchers engaged in this ambitious and necessary work to sustain pluralistic democracies and seek justice. Such considerations include topic and question selection; discussion goals and norms oriented around collective trust; approaches to teacher disclosure (sharing); and facilitation choices that consider sociopolitical context in substance and process

Productive Discussion across Political Differences: Understanding Students’ Experiences with Comfort and Discomfort within Structured Discussions of Public Policy Issues

This study investigates the effectiveness of two pedagogical strategies—deliberation and debate—in fostering productive political discussions among high school students, with a focus on overcoming affective polarization. Paying attention to students’ comfort, engagement, and willingness to participate, this study employs a mixed-method approach using data from surveys, observations, and interviews with students participating in a civic immersion program in Washington, DC. Using deliberative theory and the concept of “productive classroom discussion across political differences,” the research explores the extent to how students perceive each strategy as productive, as well as their experiences of comfort and productive and unproductive discomfort. Additional attention was paid to how identity factors such as ideology, gender, race/ethnicity, and social class influence student experiences. Results of the study indicate that deliberations tend to enhance feelings of comfort and mutual respect, while debate garnered more participation and disagreement. We found that negative feelings with debate were often related to productive discomfort. Emphasizing the importance of discussion design in cultivating productive and unproductive discomfort, we provide insight into how teachers can support student engagement in political discourse and offer practical guidance in fostering inclusive learning environments as a means to overcome affective polarization

Learning to Talk and Listen in Elementary Social Studies: Exploring a Third-Grade Teacher’s Decision to Use Classroom Talk for Community Building

With mounting polarization in the political arena and media sources, trust of one’s neighbors and of teachers are facing increasing strain in the United States. Furthermore, teachers continue to struggle with how to teach high-quality, nuanced, social studies, especially in the elementary setting, where time and resources for social studies has been depleting for decades (e.g., Fitchett et al., 2014; Heafner, 2018). Within this context, this study presents a case of a third-grade teacher who chooses to use discursive talk as a way to support high-quality social studies and to build community in her classroom. Findings suggest that classroom talk has the potential to help young children learn to talk and listen when the curriculum provides content support and that talking and listening can help build a classroom of mutual concern. This suggests helping young people learn to talk and listen to one another can help support the kind of open-mindedness and perspective-taking that is missing in a era of polarization

Being in Community with Children and Engaging Their Full Range of Civic Capabilities. A Response to Learning to Talk and Listen in Elementary Social Studies: Exploring a Third-Grade Teacher’s Decision to Use Classroom Talk for Community Building

Early childhood social studies should open opportunities for children to make sense of their social world; the civic question of how we live together is central to the social world. Elementary classrooms are uniquely positioned to support democratic civic education given the amount of time children and adults spend together, the emphasis placed on cultivating a positive classroom community, and children’s capabilities to cultivate relationships full of care and concern for people from outside their close familial relations. In response to Lo’s (2025) examination of a third-grade teacher’s use of discussion to engage in contentious topics while cultivating a sense of mutual concern within her classroom community, I consider how we engage the full range of young children’s civic capabilities and the role of the teacher within the classroom community

A Plea for Deliberation in the Classroom. A Response to Fostering Open-Minded Political Engagement through Online Interscholastic Discussions

This response to “Fostering Open-Minded Political Engagement through Online Interscholastic Discussions” reviews the strengths of the study, highlights the limitations, and discusses the importance of continuing and scaling fostering open-minded political engagement in schools, particularly in middle and high schools. Polarization, both affective and political, is one of the most pressing issues of contemporary civic life, and this study takes this issue head-on and enables students to be thoughtful in their exchanges with diverse others. The authors leverage deliberative democracy theory and educational frameworks to explore how boundary-crossing discussions can enhance students\u27 political open-mindedness and engagement. While the paper contributes valuable insights into the pedagogical possibilities of cross-school discussions, this response offers a critical assessment for further iterations of this study

Teaching Dobbs Where Divisive Concepts and Abortion Are Restricted: Teacher Learning, Controversial Issues, and Mixed-Reality Technology

Though scholarship has long championed the positive impacts of classroom considerations of controversial or difficult issues, teachers have often hesitated to broach divisive topics for numerous reasons, including legislation purporting to limit controversy in classrooms and, often, that they had limited or no preparation to teach controversies, especially not politically contentious sociopolitical contexts. I worked with a research team to use a mixed-reality teaching simulation of a controversial issue discussion as a low-stakes learning context for developing skills for collective pedagogical reasoning. The teaching simulation centered on Dobbs v. Jackson, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated a constitutional right to abortion. This article presents a qualitative case study of one participating preservice social studies teacher, Cristina. In it, I trace Cristina’s participation in my class and the teaching simulation through her decisions to teach about abortion in her middle school student teaching placement the following semester. Findings suggest that the teaching simulation played an important role in her professional development and learning, facilitating her efforts to discuss abortion in a state with bans on abortion and teaching divisive concepts

Developing Reliable Epistemic Processes for Civic Life: A Response to “‘Beyond “Yelling at Them’: Exploring the Impact of a Political Simulation in Polarized Times”

PurpleState, the political communications simulation at the heart of “Beyond ‘Yelling at Them,’” was designed to foster in students the epistemic aim of building knowledge by investigating a civic issue and the epistemic ideal of considering multiple perspectives on an issue (Chinn et al., 2014, 2021). These aims and ideals are essential for contemporary civic actors to become more informed about controversial issues. The authors offered evidence that PurpleState supported students to better understand multiple perspectives on issues in ways that may reduce the effects of polarization. We argue, however, that students may not fully achieve the epistemic aims and ideals that PurpleState tried to promote without attention to reliable epistemic processes, the final element of Chinn and colleagues’ (2014, 2021) AIR model. Teaching students reliable processes for conducting research about controversial issues is essential for political engagement that reduces affective polarization and supports multiracial democracy. We offer recommendations that could enhance PurpleState\u27s ability to prepare students for political engagement in the contemporary media environment

The Roles of Productivity, Emotions, and Identities in Classroom Discourse. A Response to Productive Discussion across Political Differences: Understanding Students’ Experiences with Comfort and Discomfort within Structured Discussions of Public Policy Issues

“Productive Classroom Discussion across Political Differences: Understanding Students’ Experiences of Comfort and Discomfort within Structured Discussion Strategies” offers a fresh perspective on high school classroom discussions by centering the role of emotions–in particular comfort and discomfort–and their relationship to students’ identities. In this response, we describe how this perspective on emotions and identities is vital and humanizing. We then build on the study’s considerations of emotions and identities in discussion, particularly for students from marginalized backgrounds, and offer additional perspectives about the purpose, format, and framing of these kinds of discussions

Beyond “Yelling at Them”: Exploring the Impact of a Political Simulation in Polarized Times

This paper explores how PurpleState, a political simulation designed to foster skills and knowledge for informed civic participation, develops students’ abilities to counter or resist the effects of political polarization and partisanship. Throughout the simulation, which has been implemented in Virginia and Wisconsin, students are asked to analyze, reason with, and communicate using evidence on a state policy issue (e.g., gun control) with a particular focus on local context. They are also asked to reflect on how what they are learning helps them understand the political information environment and their role in it. Student participants from focus groups (n=32) consistently reported applying the skills and practices from the simulation to other academic and civic contexts, in particular to engage thoughtfully with political messaging as well as the willingness to seek out and the capacity to understand multiple perspectives on controversial policy issues. These behaviors constitute two epistemic ideals, or standards for making sense of the world, that are fundamental to the PurpleState simulation and to countering the effects of polarization. Students also reported valuing and pursuing information to understand different perspectives on policy issues as well as how these issues might impact different communities or regions of their state

Fostering Open-Minded Political Engagement through Online Interscholastic Discussions: Toward Reducing Affective Political Polarization

This study explores how political discussions among diverse youth can support students’ open-minded political engagement. For this study, we collaborated with two teachers to adapt and enact instruction aimed at supporting students’ discussion of controversial issues across political, geographic, and cultural boundaries. During an instructional unit exploring various ways to strengthen our election system, students engaged in discussions with their classmates and with peers from another school via an online video discussion board. We collected data through observations and interviews. Our findings indicate that the instruction enhanced students’ understanding of their political bubbles and their motivation to engage in boundary-crossing political discussions—and that they found the opportunity to engage with students from another school to be valuable overall