ABSTRACT
While there is no shortage of theoretical and practical claims about what young people could or should learn from a social studies curriculum with at least some focus on controversial issues, to date, we do not have a clear understanding of what students do learn and why. As Hahn (1996) points out in her review of the research on issues-centered education, one of the central problems with researching what students learn from controversial issues is that there are so many different approaches, and virtually all of them are embedded in a course of study that includes a number of other components as well. This makes it dif cult to identify precisely what in uence the study of controversial issues has on the outcomes that many of its proponents hope will be achieved. Moreover, it is highly unusual to nd schools or school districts that have infused controversial issues in the curricula in a systematic way that ensures that students will have multiple opportunities throughout a number of school years to engage in issues-centered social studies. Consequently, researchers often study the effects of one issues-centered course and nd, not surprisingly, that even exceptionally well-taught courses do not result in huge gains on measurable outcomes (Hahn & Tocci, 1990; Hess & Posselt, 2002). Just as it would not be prudent to expect students to learn how to write well in a one-semester course, it is clearly problematic to expect a relatively short course to help students achieve many of the challenging, complex, and sophisticated outcomes that we expect from issues-centered social studies, such as the ability to develop and critique whether suf cient evidence exists to support a particular position.
