Democracy demands controversy (Hess, 2009), and therefore many scholars of political education in democratic countries indicate that any school-system that aspires to a constitution of a deliberative democracy needs to foster controversial-issues discussions (CID) in classrooms (Crick, 2000; Galston, 2001; Mclaughlin, 2003; Parker, 2006; Mutz, 2006; Avery et. Al., 2013; Hess & McAvoy, 2015). These kinds of discussions include and honor open-questions, diverse views and a tolerant atmosphere, and focus on authentic current political issues. Yet, in the aim to educate young students how to 'do' democracy, teachers toned to find the balance between authenticity and transformation, i.e. building a better democratic society and forming democratic future-citizens. The important educative role of CID, including argumentations and refutations, is especially vibrant in highly diverse democracies.

Nevertheless, despite long-term consensus between scholars and policy-makers regarding the importance of CID in schools, there is a growing gap between curricula instructions and teachers' actual implementation. Teachers' difficulties arise from the ongoing inflamed nature of current controversies alongside the socio-political context in which they function (Hess & McAvoy, 2015), that can restrict even skilled and committed teachers (Bickmore & Parker, 2014) from engaging in CID. The academic discourse elaborates on teachers' fears of CID in their classrooms and describes restrictions of institutional censorship on any deliberation beyond 'Official Knowledge' (Apple, 2014) and the political consensus, which are strengthened by the cooling effect of media events well known in popular culture. The Israeli context reduces teachers' motivations to lead CID even more (Ichilov, 2003; Tamir, 2015): (1) Israel is part of a long-term intractable conflict (Bar-Tal, 2000), which fosters ethnocentric conceptions and intolerance to marginal positions, let alone opposing positions. (2) The centralized educational system focuses on preparing students for high-stakes national tests; this does not require CID, and results in an adherence to the 'Official Knowledge' and to the formal curriculum that deals with some political controversies.

In my field research I sought to determine the veracity of the above noted critical claims, by exploring the implementation of political education in public schools and the conditions which enable it. The key research questions were: How do teachers form the pedagogical practices they use to implement CID and what are their considerations? And, most importantly for every democratic society plunged into severe political conflict: What enables them to do so fearlessly, despite their complicated socio-political and organizational situation? In the context of this presentation, I will refer to this phenomenon as Controversy Work. The contribution of this study is, therefore, not in discovering to what extent political education is common in public schools, but rather to understanding what enables it to occur.

Analyzing civic teachers' Controversy Work I draw on de Certeau (1984) 'Practice Theory', which describes the ability of individuals to function daily in disciplined social frameworks and to trick the coercion of the social order. The Practice Theory enables us to explain and understand teachers' agency within oppressive social situations, as they try to fulfill their educational aims without being considered revolutionary or even too subversive (Rouse, 2007).

I conducted a case-study based ethnographic research, in a large Israeli High-school. I refer this high-school as 'typical' in the Israeli context since it is an urban Jewish state high-school; it's a non-selective school; school has no ideological uniqueness; the school is located in a city that has typical right-wing voting patterns and an average SE level. The field research examined the Controversy Work of five civics teachers, who ranged in age, professional ideology, political ideology, gender, and ethnic identities, and who all taught in national-test track classes. I conducted long-term observations and in-depth interviews, took part in staff-meetings and collected artifacts. In contrast to commonly held beliefs in this field of study, the initial findings revealed that all of the teachers conducted CID in a relatively open classroom climate, alongside systematic preparation for the national high-risk exams. None of them adopted a strategy that avoided CID. In order to represent the Pedagogic Content Knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1986) of CID maintained by teachers, the first phase of my analytical mapping of the Controversy Work of these teachers lean on Kerr's (1999) distinction between three different dimensions of civic education: Education ABOUT Citizenship (knowledge), THROUGH Citizenship (experiences) and FOR Citizenship (dispositions). The second phase of the analytical mapping focused on the conditions that enable the teachers to implement fearlessly their Controversy Work.

The findings indicate a complex reality. I didn't identify clear types of teachers who ignore political controversies completely or, on the other hand, implement CID systematically and exclusively. Instead, the study tracks the daily considerations by which teachers achieve Balance, enabling them to integrate CID despite and within their difficult context. My leading theoretical metaphor presents the teachers as acrobats, walking carefully but decisively on a tightrope, juggling their intentions and abilities with the societal framework which restricts them. Remaining on the tightrope requires the development of balancing practices that will prevent teachers from 'falling down', but also to rely on 3 levels of Safety Nets which enable teachers to fearlessly moderate CID: National Safety Nets include broader influences such as the CID required explicitly by the curriculum; Formal instructions given by the Ministry of Education; and especially the professional ethos of the large community of civics teachers throughout the country. Local Nets include characteristics of the schools' atmosphere which foster the legitimation and encouragement to Controversy Work, mainly: the presence of politics in school environment; political discourse in the teachers' professional community; the principle backing to both of them. In the field research, I recognized a school micro-political-culture, which fosters controversy and whose aim is to educate the students to relate to a society ridden by conflict as a natural and routine situation. Personal Nets include idiosyncratic characteristics of each teacher: the proactive use of the teachers' biography and their positioning regarding the students; the relationships they develop with the class, especially relating to trust; their professional knowledge and the way to use it. The conclusions provide an analytic framework to understand factors to create teachers' agency and provide sufficient leeway to stimulate CID. Therefore, it can contribute to educators' professional development processes and to policy-making in divided societies.

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