Teaching Contested Science: A Goals-Based Framework for Gender, Sexuality, and Beyond
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Current approaches to teaching contested science increasingly position educators between disciplinary obligations and institutional pressures. This editorial proposes a goals-based pedagogical framework that separates empirical claims from normative applications, teaching students to trace how different values lead to distinct policy conclusions from the same evidence base. Grounded in moral psychology and philosophy of science, the goal-value fit approach preserves academic rigor, models critical thinking, and may provide institutional protection in ideologically hostile climates. While developed for gender/sexuality content, the framework extends to any domain where scientific consensus meets ideological resistance.Keywords: Pedagogy, Contested Science, Academic Freedom, Gender Identity, Goal-Value Fit
