This study investigated Taiwanese secondary school teachers' personal practical knowledge of their gatekeeping practices as it relates to the teaching of controversial public issues. The study examined how a teacher's life history enters into the curriculum they teach. In particular, it asks how this life history impacts their controversial public issues gatekeeping. The study is grounded in an instrumental case study of six Taiwanese secondary history teachers in senior high schools in Taiwan. Semi-structured interviews, non-participant observation and an analysis of the formal and informal Taiwanese curriculum (such as the National Curriculum Guidelines and Social Studies lesson plans and textbooks) form the basis for my inquiry.A central finding of this study illustrates how these teachers' personal practical knowledge influences teachers' decision making and gatekeeping of controversial public issues in Taiwan. Key findings include that these teachers explain their teaching choices by making references to their personal practical knowledge. Personal practical knowledge is an approach to understanding teacher professional knowledge: professional beliefs, professional identity, and professional commitment. Finally, the last findings show how these teachers reflected the concept of teacher as stranger in their own teaching of controversial public issues which has, in accordance to the work of Maxine Greene (1973), created possibilities for releasing the imagination of students. To conclude, this study identified and explored the implications of Asian contexts for social studies teaching. Its implications are for teachers around the globe who make commitments to teach controversial public issues. This study also fills in a gap in the theoretical and empirical literature with regard to social studies education in Taiwan, and other Asian countries, and adds to a growing body of work exploring teachers' teaching of controversial public issues in exam-centric and curriculum-centric classroom spaces.
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