According to Helsper (2018), appropriate crisis initiation and crisis resolution (Oevermann, 2002) are part of professional teacher action. In this context, teacher action must not only offer supportive crisis solutions in the process of dealing with the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge, the understanding of new perspectives, and the readjustment of the relation to oneself and the world, but it must also repeatedly irritate the already unfolded interpretations of the self and the world and thus trigger crises of knowledge that can function as sites of emergence of the knowledge (Combe and Gebhardt 2012). Discussions about controversial topics in classrooms might provide opportunities for such readjustments to take place. In fact, a broad international body of research reports that students who participated in thoughtful discussion of controversial issues in inclusive classroom climates, tend to exhibit core democratic understandings, dispositions and skills like openness to alternative points of view and critical thinking skills (Hahn, 1998, 2010; Hess & Avery, 2008; Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, & Losito, 2009).

However, potentially conflictual talk on public issues can be very challenging for both teachers and learners, which is why it tends to be rare in classrooms. Many teachers report they would like to teach about controversial issues but they are concerned about their own pedagogical skills and content knowledge (Hess & Avery, 2008), about political, institutional and curricular constraints (Pace, 2011; Wills 2007) and about losing their relationship they had built with their students, especially students from various backgrounds (Engebreston, 2018). They also fear the backlash from parent communities, and the loss of classroom control (Larson & Parker 1996).

Though these studies allow a deep insight into the challenges teachers face when it’s about teaching conflictual issues and topics, we know little about how teachers deal with spontaneous identity-related (referring to migration, religion, socio-economic background and gender) pupil remarks. Such remarks can irritate teachers and the situation in the classroom can become quite tense. How do teachers deal with such spontaneous comments in diverse primary schools? What strategies do they apply? To what extent do these strategies enable or impede new learning opportunities in Helsper’s sense?

This contribution will furthermore address two more underemphasized aspects in this field: The question of a) diversity and controversial discussions and b) controversial discussions in primary classrooms. This paper therefore means to contribute to the question of how educational practices may give inclusive answers to the diverse perspectives contemporary classrooms often expose nowadays, in a context where homogenizing tendencies in education seem to become more powerful.

To answer the question of how teachers in diverse classrooms deal with spontaneous identity-related remarks in primary classrooms, this paper will draw a) on studies of a literature review in process, whose findings will be put into a dialogue with b) interviews generated in the Swiss context. The literature review presents – by referring to different theoretical strands – a synthesis of classroom-based qualitative research on the implementation of dialogic practices which address students into controversial talks in diverse primary classrooms, talks that emerge in the context of spontaneous interactions in the school context. Several aspects, like the dialogic practices applied, the teaching and the emotional styles as well as the inclusion of personal knowledge/ experience of teachers and students, are scrutinized. The data generated in the Swiss context deals with the question of what primary school teachers perceive as helpful or challenging when it’s about dealing with controversial issues in their classrooms. The six semi-structure qualitative interviews were conducted with female teachers who find themselves in their first years of teaching; the data were analyzed using the content analysis method according to Mayring (2014).

The analysis of the studies of the literature review and the data generated in the Swiss context so far indicate the challenges teachers face and the strategies they apply when facing identity-based remarks in the primary school context. At best, such situations are experienced by teachers as “quite difficult”, at worst, as “simply overwhelming”. Some of the teachers seem to apply dialogue-opening strategies that enable new perspectives on the sensitive topic by acting as “crisis initiators” in terms of Helsper (2018), whereby the educator acts according to the structural logic of his action as "obstetrician in the process of generating the new" (Oevermann, 2002, p.35). In this case, the interpersonal conflict is used as a teachable moment to create a powerful learning opportunity for the students. Other teachers apply – intentionally or not – rather dialogue-closing strategies, where the emerged conflict is declared as neither acceptable nor tolerable. In this case teachers make clear that no space will be given to such discriminatory comments, the topic is presented as “settled” (Hess, 2009), generating normatively desired answers as well as self-silencing. The teacher’s interventions help understand how incorporating sensitive dialogue on differences in the diverse classroom is a messy practice. The attempt made by some teachers to create a climate of democratic dialogue, that tries to validate and make visible student’s diverse backgrounds, might end up marginalizing and reinforcing their invisibility. The contribution therefore raises further questions on how we ought to intervene to validate the (diverse) student’s knowledge, the heterogeneous and silent voices in classrooms and highlights how teachers need to be cognizant of the complex ways students respond or do not respond to the teacher’s well-meaning interventions, realized in the area of tension of various pedagogical antinomies (Helsper 2016).

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