Today's world demands initial teacher training that favors the acquisition of competencies and skills related to the design of socially relevant learning situations. This is due to the fact that we are facing new global challenges and continuous changes in our society. In this context, the need arises to address relevant social, cultural and natural issues, which respond to a critical, participatory and reflective citizenship. This education should promote the connection of human beings with their environment and contribute to the construction of sustainable societies. In this new paradigm, Heritage Education is presented as a relevant discipline to propose this type of learning situations. Already in the UN Agenda 20-30 for Sustainable Development and the 2005 Faro Convention, the importance of heritage education for the development of eco-citizenship, participation and social transformation is underlined.

Based on a training model, centered on heritage education, in the university degree of primary education at the University of Seville, the results obtained from the analysis of conceptions and productions of teachers in initial training are presented. This model focuses on controversial heritages as a means to train future teachers in eco-citizenship skills, committed to their social, cultural and natural environment. Thus, in the initial phase, the participants' previous ideas and conceptions about heritage and controversial issues are analyzed. There is a second phase of search and development of the information of the learning situations. In a final phase, the students' productions are analyzed with respect to research projects they carry out in the classroom on controversial issues.

According to Santiesteban (2019), in order to have a quality social sciences didactics, initial teacher training must include critical reflections on invisible and/or oppressed people or groups, places and/or times in oblivion, controversial issues or relevant problems. Teachers in initial teacher training should develop critical thinking skills that make them question different points of view, make judgments and take positions on the issues raised (Ross, 2018; Pagès, 2011;) and promote citizen empowerment practices that allow students to deploy their capacities for social activism (Giroux, 2019).

The intended objective revolves around two fundamental questions. On the one hand, the aim is to know the conceptions of teachers in initial training on topics related to heritage, and the socially relevant problems for the teaching-learning of social sciences. On the other hand, to detect and find out which socially relevant problems they have considered relevant to be investigated and analyzed through their own productions.

The research is part of a qualitative paradigm. It is based on an interpretative perspective focused on understanding the meanings of educational reality (Latorre et al., 2021). Thus, through this study, the conceptions of the subjects investigated are analyzed and it is revealed how they conceive the social reality in which they are immersed, from a heritage perspective. For this purpose, 155 subjects were initially selected from the primary education degree of the University of Seville. The results obtained have been collected from two instruments. A conceptions questionnaire adapted from previous research (Morón-Monge, et al., 2021; Sampedro-Martín, et al., 2023a) and the final reports of the research work carried out by the participants. This information is analyzed based on a system of categories and subcategories developed and validated by the EPITEC2 project (Arroyo-Mora, et al. 2022; Sampedro-Martín, et al., 2023b).

The study conducted on the conceptions of teachers in initial training with respect to heritage and controversial heritages reveals several significant findings. Firstly, it is observed that most students perceive heritage mainly as a symbol of identity of a specific environment and secondly, they approach a more monumentalism definition of heritage, identifying monumental elements close to their context. This vision highlights the importance of heritage elements as tangible representations of the history and culture of a community. Secondly, the students recognize the existence of very marked controversies surrounding certain heritage elements, such as bullfighting, However, a notable discrepancy is evident in the perception of controversies related to other heritage elements, such as the Rocío pilgrimage, the Internet or the Encarnación viewpoint, among others. While some students consider that these elements also generate controversy, others do not perceive such debates, suggesting a diversity of opinions and a possible lack of consensus on these issues. Castro et. al (2020) have already shown that the dominant conception of heritage among teachers in training is the monumentalism-tourist one, followed by the ethnographic-folklore and symbolic-identitarian visions, with the holistic conception being the least accepted. This fact suggests the need to introduce in university teacher training programs that encompass heritage in a holistic and symbolic-identitarian way. These results underline the need for heritage education that not only transmits knowledge about the historical and cultural value of heritage elements, but also encourages critical thinking and debate about the controversies that may arise around them.Likewise, the design of training programs that are based on heritage education can enable the development of projects that address the study of controversial social problems

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