Creating strategies to deal with problems of teaching controversial issues in social studies education in African schools

The teaching of controversial issues has been widely viewed as preparing students for effective citizenship and, as such, is regarded as inevitable in social studies classrooms if students are to be able to think intelligently and to participate effectively in society. However, the effective implementation of issue‐centered education in African schools, particularly in the area of social studies, is replete with problems. This paper examines those problems and concludes with some suggestions as to how controversial issues could be handled in our classrooms.