Teachers’ Challenges and Resilience-building Teaching Activities in Secondary Schools: Fundamentals of an Exploratory Research, Special Issue Polarising contentious issues in the classroom. Teachers’ challenges and responses in secondary schools

This article introduces the topic and the adopted methodology, within the framework of the H2020 Project named PARTICIPATION, to conduct explorative research on the main challenges and contentious topics teachers face in the classroom as part of their work with students in secondary schools, and the possible reactions teachers may adopt to dealing with these challenges. This research, conducted between 2021 and the beginning of 2022 in six EU Member States, started from the assumption that school can be seen as a microcosm of society, which brings together many worldviews, ways of thinking and living, thus becoming a place symbolising social difference, where various conflicts may arise. After having introduced the topic and provided the methodological notions underlying this research, this article presents an overview of teachers’ challenges and resilience-building teaching activities in secondary school drawing from the existing literature, by relying on the relevant academic and grey literature on this topic. This article sets the scene for all the contributions of this monographic issue.