Dr Pam Lowe
Dr Helen Jones

The idea for this special issue arose through conversations that we had about the challenges of teaching sensitive issues. We had been pondering the ethical dilemmas that often emerge when researching such issues and realised there was a gap between the ethical challenges, demands and advice for researchers compared with those teaching these subjects. Advice on researching sensitive issues has been available for a considerable time (eg Lee 1993) with research power relationships being explored in depth particularly in feminist research (eg Letherby 2003). Universities have begun to make evermore demands over social science research with the growth of university research ethics committees and whilst there is still debate over the role that these should or should not play (eg Haggerty 2004), they formally recognise the need to respect and protect the informants involved in research, and set out to ensure that those conducting research are aware of the need to consider the wellbeing of those involved in research.

In practice, what this means is that those conducting research into subjects such as sexual or domestic violence are required to take steps such as raising issues considerately with informants, allowing withdrawals at any time, and to have in place support services for informants. Time and resources for these demands are expected to be built into projects. Yet paradoxically, those of us who teach students about this topic have little or no institutional requirements along these lines, leaving us often unsupervised and under-resourced. The prevalence of sexual and domestic violence in society means that there is a high likelihood that every classroom contains survivors of sexual and/or domestic violence, and many of them will want or need to disclose this to the teaching staff. Our experience over a number of years is that every cohort contains students who have direct experience of the sensitive issues we teach.

Yet paradoxically, in subjects that explore issues such as terrorism, there is an increasing tendency for universities to exert pressure to censor what can be taught. Scrutiny of reading lists (to determine if courses that discuss terrorism are inciting students to violence) has been defined as a direct attack on academic freedom (Newman, 2009). This is a threefold affront to the knowledge, skills and values of the educator and the decisions taken to best tackle a sensitive topic.  The subject matter of sensitive issues can be local or global, and range from intimate partner violence, disability, politics, racism, torture, terrorism or death. They are usually complicated and are issues on which people often hold strong opinions based on their own experiences, interests and values. There are no easy answers. From domestic violence to terrorism, there is a ‘sensitivity spectrum’ within which staff might either be left to manage without support or alternatively come under the scrutiny of the university or indeed the state. So issues exist at all points along this sensitivity spectrum and there may or may not be institutional interest in what you teach.

Another aspect we discussed in considering this special edition of ELiSS was the extent of critical engagement with the issues (by teachers and students). The students of today are faced with decisions about a wide range of issues and they deserve the opportunity to develop the skills needed to understand an increasingly complex world. The papers that follow explore what sensitive issues are, how subjects can ‘become’ sensitive and why they should be taught. The papers also give an insight into what guidance exists for handling sensitive issues and outline potential strategies for handling and exploring sensitive issues in the classroom.

Almost any topic can become sensitive if emotional responses are raised, if there are competing explanations about events, if there are political differences about what should happen next or challenges about how issues could be resolved. The combination of knowledge, skills and values will determine what is taught and how it is taught: this intersection is often located at the level of the individual educator and the dynamic environment of the classroom (see Figure 1). The papers for this special issue all have at their core a reflective appreciation of the relation between knowledge, skills and values and how these need to be constantly re-negotiated when working with sensitive issues.

Figure 1 - Teaching and Learning Sensitive Issues 

The world can seem a difficult place but students should not be sheltered from sensitive issues. Bronwen Lichtenstein, an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama, discusses how skills and values emerge in the classroom in teaching HIV in the American Deep South. Understanding is a pre-requisite for debating global issues, handling disagreement and recognising the views of others. This fascinating and detailed paper is underpinned by the author’s honesty in sharing the challenges inherent in engaging students practically and politically.  Involving students in what she calls ‘learning and leading projects’ she discusses how students are partnered with employees in HIV outreach and community-based organisations. This not only benefits students it also benefits the local community. Centrally, the knowledge generated about social inequalities, together with the skills developed, enabled students to construct analysis of HIV stigma.

Rebecca Hayes-Smith, Tara Richards and Kathryn Branch explore the nature of role strain experienced by female academics when a student discloses sexual assault and intimate partner violence. As we said earlier, this is an experience that we share with the authors and this paper clearly shows how disclosure might be an effect of teaching certain subjects (subjects more often taught by women) and that the consequences of that can result in role strain. This indicates a real need for awareness raising/training and is potentially a function that should be met internally within institutions or by organisations such as the HEA/Subject Centres in the UK.

The paper by Jane Nolan and Sarah Oerton focuses on the use of sexually explicit materials in the classroom. They set out the ways in academic discussions of erotica and/or pornography are contextualised by the use of visual materials in the classroom. However whilst this is, they argue, a valuable part of the teaching and learning experiences, it is a challenged to manage. As well as having to manage a range of students’ emotional responses, it can be difficult to get them to engage academically with the materials. In addition there are legal and institutional issues to be addressed, which given the problematic nature of definitional issues can leave both students and staff accessing such materials in a precarious position.

Christian Klesse examines the problems and possibilities of teaching ‘race’ and ethnicity within undergraduate programmes that have a substantial sociological content. The paper’s reflexive approach is theoretically engaging and shows how such education can be socially challenging. Shirin House also explores issues in developing anti-racist education, focusing on the ways that minority-ethnic student experiences can be explored in the classroom to illuminate the issues under discussion. Yet as Santokh Singh Gill and Claire Worley remind us, students’ perceptions of the issues can be challenging to manage within the classroom and their assumptions of who is a ‘legitimate’ teacher play a part in this. Similarly, the first of the practice papers, by Jennifer Nixon and Des McDermott, is the result of considerable experience in the field and of grappling the pedagogical and political problems involved. These papers will be useful to educators working with both within and outside of the formal university as such sensitive issues touch on deeply held values and attitudes. Telling students what to think will at best have no effect and at worse close their minds. Knowledge construction is not mere information transmission. By taking different pedagogic approaches, values and attitudes can be challenged and developed, the skills of emotional literacy can be enhanced and inter-personal exploration can take place.

The second practice paper provides a personal reflection on the challenges and rewards of teaching sensitive topics to criminology undergraduates. Based in Australia, Derek Dalton gives a very positive rationale for the teaching of sensitive issues and claims that students ‘relish the opportunity to engage with sensitive topics’. Far from shielding students from a heartless world, here the aim is to find ways in which hard topics can be presented with sensitivity but without limiting debate: through provocation comes response but within an ethics of care. This was achieved in part by giving up some of the control usually invested in educators and allowing students to opt out of sessions they felt too uncomfortable with. If that sounds controversial to you then we can only urge you to read on.

Jo Winwood and Catherine Lamond in their practice paper also raise the issue of giving over control and encouraging students to be independent learners.   By challenging students’ work practices and beliefs, the authors wanted students to do more than just ‘say the right thing’ in order to pass the course. They wanted their students to honestly evaluate their ‘values and beliefs’ in relation to professional practice. Utilising a social constructivist approach to learning students had to exercise autonomy and reflection in regulating their own learning.

Glenys Caswell provides an easily accessible practice paper on the issue of teaching death studies which has relevance for anyone who teaches sensitive issues. She states clearly how students and staff tend to share an unspoken agreement to leave their emotions out of the classroom. Yet when teaching sensitive topics it is a fact that some students might cry: how prepared are we for that? Does it matter if students cry? How should we respond? The honesty of the paper speaks as much about the author as it does the issues. We have all had times when the learning environment has fallen around our ears but it is rare to read a scholarly analysis of how and why this happens within the context of such a sensitive topic.

The final practice paper by James Fitzgerald and Anthony Lemieux reflects on an internationally collaborative class on the study of terrorism. It sets out both the practical arrangements plus the pedagogical benefits of the approach. Students were able to share and discuss different perspectives of terrorism from both US and European perspectives and the discussion enabled them to challenge common assumptions and enabled deeper understanding. It further highlights one of the common threads running through all the papers in this special issue. Sensitive issues can be challenging to teach, but with carefully management they enable students to develop their critical skills and knowledge.

We were extremely fortunate to receive a large number of submissions for this special issue and all authors are thanked for their honesty and generosity in sharing insights into their teaching practice. We were supported in the selection and review process by ELiSS journal administrator Sara Milner, who helped to keep us on track and to time with her cheerful efficiency. We also owe a debt of thanks to the many referees who reviewed the papers in Spring 2010 and without whose wisdom we would still be struggling. Ultimately, understanding and engaging with the pedagogical issues raised in teaching and learning sensitive subjects is, we argue, both the way to ensure the wellbeing of students and that no topics are seen to be ‘off the curriculum’. This special issue seeks to begin to address this gap.

Haggerty KD (2004) Ethics Creep: Governing Social Science
Research in the Name of Ethics Qualitative Sociology, 27 (4) 391-414

Lee R (1993) Doing Research on Sensitive Topics London: Sage

Letherby G ( 2003) Feminist Research in Theory and Practice. Buckingham:
Open University Press       

Newman M (2009) Reading lists inspected for capacity to incite violence. Times Higher Education Supplement. (25 June 2009)