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This paper argues the importance in and for a democratic state and society of discussing controversial issues in education. In particular it analyses two national educational contexts, that of England and South Africa. It considers both whether they provide a suitable framework for teaching controversial issues in school classrooms and if they prepare teachers to be able to organise discussions of controversial issues in schools. The paper then examines interview data on teaching controversial issues with university tutors and student teachers in four universities, two in England and two in South Africa. The data suggest that there are still serious obstacles in both countries to teaching controversial issues in schools and in preparing teacher education students to teach about controversial issues.

The reaction of teachers to an innovation, the Science Education Project in South Africa, has been analysed by considering the demands made on them in their roles of subject specialist, classroom director, professional and employee. The Science Education Project relies on phased, ongoing inservice work, incorporating courses, on‐site teacher support and teacher groups, to achieve its purposes of encouraging teacher growth and hence more active, pupil‐oriented classrooms. The four roles represent an increasing complexity of involvement of implementers with teachers, and have been found to correspond with the phases of inservice work.