ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the role played by beliefs about children's capabilities for understanding social, moral and political issues in shaping teachers' willingness to address these issues within primary education. I examine the impact of theories and research in developmental psychology on educational practice during the past three decades, and conclude by considering the prospects for establishing controversial issues more firmly within the primary curriculum. The original version of this chapter was published in 1988. At that time I suggested that the general resistance to controversial issues during the 1960s and 1970s had been shaped by two powerful sets of beliefs: the first relating to the protection of young children's ‘innocence’ the second concerned with respecting their ‘readiness’ to understand social, moral and political issues — otherwise known as ‘sequential developmentalism’.
