Shifting the Conversation around Teaching Sensitive Topics: Critical Colleagueship in a Teacher Discourse Community

Shifting the Conversation around Teaching Sensitive Topics: Critical Colleagueship in a Teacher Discourse Community Abstract: In this book club study designed to examine practicing teachers' perspectives on a young adult book dealing with identity, mental health, sexuality, and family, researchers describe the tensions that arose in participants' dialogue regarding self-censorship and the desire to meet students' needs. Authors note findings related to how teachers from rural schools responded to the novel under study and collaborated to reach new understandings. Findings also included a pattern of critical colleagueship, where participants both challenged ideas regarding the limits of sensitive topics and supported one other in building upon ideas of how to teach texts with potentially taboo content, highlighting the value of discourse communities as professional development.