As part of our teaching philosophy, we believe in the value of exploring contentious issues with our students to encourage civic engagement and effective leadership. When we introduce contentious issues in the classroom, we define a contentious topic as one that is (1) debatable and inconclusive among experts and (2) deeply important to the general public (Zimmerman & Robertson, 2017). In the process of introducing contentious topics, however, we learned that we run the risk of confronting comments from students such as the following:
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