Original text and photos: Lise Samdal
Translation: Mari Lund Eide
The new research group ‘Research and teaching on controversial issues’ recently invited two upper secondary classes to a discussion workshop. The students were presented with questions such as ‘Would you be willing to engage in civil disobedience to fight for an issue that is particularly important to you?’ and ‘How do you experience disagreeing with others?’
The overarching theme for the workshop was civil disobedience and the students were presented with a range of examples of current and historical issues where people have turned to civil disobedience to fight for a cause they care about.
The aim of the discussion workshop was to engage students in conversations with each other about issues, decisions, or actions connected to civil disobedience that may be characterized as controversial – as well as exploring their own individual opinions on issues. The students were given time to think and reflect individually as well as working in groups. One exercise also involved wandering around the classroom to identify peers that shared opinions on certain matters.
Interdisciplinary and exploratory work
Research group member and PhD candidate Christian Lomsdalen explains that the workshop is specifically tailored to address the new interdisciplinary topics ‘Democracy and citizenship’ and ‘Health and Life Skills’, which were implemented into Norwegian curricula in 2020:
– In the new subject curricula we see that navigating disagreement and diversities of opinions has gained a bigger and more important role. Therefore it is important that we study how this may be implemented in teaching and learning and how students handle it. The importance of such work is enhanced by the increasing polarization that we’re witnessing in and beyond Norway.
Facts: ‘Research and teaching on controversial issues’
- A UiB-based research group founded in 2022, consisting of researchers from the Department of Foreign Languages and the Department of archeology, history, cultural studies and religion
- Conducts interdisciplinary research and teaching, including organizing discussion workshops and talks.
- All researchers involved are concerned with controversial issues in education, in specific school subjects, or issues that are considered controversial in society.
Facts: Aims of discussion workshop
- To study how students deal with complex issues that often stir disagreement
- To observe how they reason and interact when they ‘make up their minds’ or take a stand on an issue
- To explore what they are willing to do to convince others and how the deliberation process unfolds
- Observe how they experience discussions of issues that are important to them
Post-doctoral researcher Ida Vikøren Andersen conducts research on adolescents’ participation in the climate debate as part of the CLIMLIFE project. She explains that the workshop takes an exploratory approach to controversial issues:
– We want to explore how adolescents can act democratically in other and more ways than voting in elections, she explains.
PhD Candidate Mari Lund Eide explains that the researchers are interested in learning more about how students respond to different approaches to controversial issues:
– We’re not just interested in what they think or argue, but also how they interact with each other about the issues and dilemmas we present them with. Because we are such an interdisciplinary group we also look for different things and ask different questions, and therefore we can learn a lot from each other, Eide explains.
Gathering data for co-authored article
In addition to engaging students in reflection and discussions, the researchers conducted observations throughout as well as collected the students’ notes. The students also completed a survey where they encountered questions such as ‘Do you often discuss your opinions with others (friends, family, classmates etc.)?’ and ‘Have you disagreed with anyone about anything recently?’
– The data gathered provides nuanced and interesting insight into how students experience such situations, explains Eide.
While Lomsdalen, Eide and Vikøren conducted the teaching, professor Marie von der Lippe and associate professor Hild Hoff were dedicated to classroom observations.
The goal of the data collection is to produce a co-authored article on exploratory approaches to controversial issues. The research group is soon organizing some additional discussion workshops with new classes to gather more data for the article.