Conference Program

Democratic education is not only a matter of transmitting civic knowledge but of cultivating the habits and dispositions that make pluralistic life possible: listening, justifying, disagreeing, and revising one’s views in public (Dewey; 1916). Yet, as schooling is increasingly managed through performative logics and risk-avoidance, opportunities for democratic subjectification can shrink, even when “citizenship” remains a curricular label (Biesta; 2006; Biesta; 2013). Classroom discussion of controversial issues (CIs) has long been proposed as a key practice for democratic learning (Stradling, Noctor, & Baines; 1984; Hess; 2009; Hess & McAvoy; 2015), but it is also a site where teachers’ vulnerability, neutrality dilemmas, and institutional pressures become visible (Journell; 2017; Cassar et al.; 2021).

In the digital age, these tensions are amplified. Episodes of school violence travel quickly through news platforms, messaging apps, and algorithmic feeds, often framed through sensationalism and polarisation. Teachers meet these events “already interpreted” by media and peer talk, and must decide whether they belong to the educational mandate or should be treated as external safety matters. Research on unplanned controversial issues highlights how such moments can throw “the classroom in turmoil,” requiring rapid professional judgement shaped by emotions, prior experiences, and task perception (Cassar et al.; 2021; Cassar et al.; 2023). At the same time, recent debate cautions against removing emotions from civic discussion too quickly, arguing that political emotions may be educational resources rather than mere risks (Surina; 2025).

This paper presents an ongoing multi-regional Italian study (upper secondary level) that investigates whether – and under which conditions – teachers perceive school violence as a CI that calls for educational intervention, or as a matter to be delegated beyond schooling. The project currently relies on a single-phase data collection built as a mixed-method questionnaire. The instrument combines (1) a short narrative from real media scenario about a violent episode entering school, designed to anchor responses in concrete; (2) an elicitation task where participants formulate a spontaneous question prompted by the situation; and (3) a set of Likert-scale items and open questions aligned with key CI dimensions (epistemic, political, emotional, and professional) (Hand; 2008; Hess; 2009).

Analytically, the study integrates quantitative and qualitative strands: Likert data are used to identify response patterns and teacher positioning profiles, while the written component undergoes thematic and discursive coding to capture boundary-work, justificatory repertoires, and silences. This written approach offers some advantages, like privacy, reduced group dynamics, and traceable texts, but also limitations: brevity, self-presentation, and the absence of dialogic probing that can surface implicit assumptions. Survey data will be collected in Spring 2026 and analysed through a convergent mixed-method design to inform future research and teacher education on democratic deliberation in digitally mediated school controversies.