Chapter 7: Exploration of Teachers’ Teaching of Controversial Global issues in Taiwan

This study investigated Taiwanese secondary school teachers’ personal practical knowledge of their gatekeeping practices as it relates to the teaching of controversial global issues. In this instrumental case study of six Taiwanese secondary history teachers in senior high schools in Taiwan, I explored how the teachers taught contemporary controversial global issues (e.g., national sovereignty, post-coloniality, cultural and social issues pertaining to Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese identity, and gender and LGBTQ issues in Taiwan). Semi-structured interviews, nonparticipant observation and an analysis of the formal and informal Taiwanese curriculum (such as the National Curriculum Guidelines and social studies lesson plans and textbooks) formed the basis for my inquiry. A central finding of this study illustrates how the teachers in the study challenged the stereotype of Asian teachers as always following a centralized curriculum; these teachers instead collaborated to generate authentic curricular resources, tried to decenter the exam-centric and curriculumcentric classroom space, and advocated for students’ civic engagement. This study also fills a gap in the theoretical and empirical literature with regard to social studies education in Taiwan and other Asian countries, and adds to a growing body of work exploring teachers’ teaching of controversial global issues in nationally centralized educational settings and also in exam-centric and curriculum-centric classroom spaces. Most importantly, this study helps us understand the possibility of Taiwanese teachers’ increased autonomy and authority over their own curricular-instructional decisions.