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The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) invite students to engage in close reading of primary source texts from American history, but an overly rigid definition of close reading that excludes providing background knowledge threatens to undermine these efforts. This approach flies in the face of decades of research on successful reading comprehension strategies. It also rejects the extensive literature on discipline-based learning in history, which has routinely affirmed the importance of context for understanding primary source texts. Primary sources are typically drawn from a world different from that of the students in time or place, or both. Teachers should provide historical context to their students by giving them information about the time, location, and purpose for the creation of the source. They should also situate the source in a specific location—whether local, national, or international—and examine the source in relation to other events of the time. Context is not the enemy of close reading of primary sources; context is the very thing that makes close reading possible and meaningful.

Authors frequently discuss and provide examples of doing history in the social studies classroom. Few focus, however, on allowing students to predict the outcome of historical events before learning what actually happened. In this article, I describe an activity allowing students to make their own predictions informing their understanding of the historical events related to Articles of Confederation. I developed this strategy based on my evolving understanding of how to bring historical thinking into the classroom. I discuss adding the concept of prediction to a previously published lesson plan and how, during my subsequent year in the classroom, I enriched the lesson to elicit student empathy. Finally, the article offers suggestions for teachers developing their own lessons incorporating student predictions.

The religious tradition of male circumcision has come increasingly under attack across a number of European states. While critics of the practice argue that the problem is about children’s rights and the proper relationship between secular and religious traditions, Jews tend to see these attacks within the longer history of attempts to assimilate and remake them according to the norms of the majority. Using the 2012 German legal controversy concerning the issue as my vantage point, I explore how contemporary criticism of male circumcision remains entangled with ambivalence toward Judaism and the Jews as the “other.” Through a close reading of the arguments, I show how opponents use the seemingly neutral language of universal human rights to (re)make Jewish difference according to the norms of the majority. I conclude by arguing that such an approach to this issue runs the risk of turning Jews once again into strangers at a time when cultural anxieties are troubling European societies.

Geotechnologies have a long tradition in several areas of society and research. The recent development of the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies opened several doors to the contribution of tourism. Emergent technologies contributions to tourism and planning such as web mapping, augmented reality (AR), crowdsourcing and crowdsensing are relatively recent, and there is a lack of research around their potential for Creative Tourism enhancement. For example, combining web mapping with AR or storytelling can be an excellent contribution to operators, planners and tourists. For research purposes, new opportunities are open, particularly by integrating community-shared data. It is well known for the popularity of social networks, the exponential growth of photo sharing, but few studies have been implemented to understand their contribution to research. This chapter focuses on emerging geotechnologies concerning cultural mapping, Creative Tourism and sustainability. Since it is a new growing niche, more research is needed to develop and understand the potential of new approaches. Besides traditional techniques such as quantitative (e.g. surveys) and qualitative ones (e.g. interviews, focus groups and world café), it revises the role of geotechnologies on Creative Tourism development and growing activities. Results from case studies from Europe are analysed.

The aim of this study is to explore the drivers of supply and demand for attention in the managerial context, and develop a framework of managerial tools for allocating attention to various competing demands.

Deliberative attention refers to the application of attention to prolonged reflection and consideration of problems where routine approaches are insufficient. Drawing on theories of cognitive and structural constraints to the allocation of attention among competing stimuli, the paper investigates how managers match the strategic demands for deliberative attention and the supply available to individuals in their firms. This is used to develop a model of factors influencing the matching of supply and demand.

The paper uses this model to recommend specific strategies for explicitly managing deliberative attention and to categorize the appropriate application of a range of existing strategic management tools based on the nature and inherent uncertainty of the organizational problem being faced.

The model suggests that a primary strategic task of top managers is the appropriate management of attention within the firm. Understanding attention as a firm resource to be appropriately and deliberately managed helps to advance theoretical understanding of the human side of valuable resources in the firm. Such knowledge may also help practitioners to be more cognizant of their investments of valuable attention resources.

This is one of the first studies to treat attention as a scarce and valuable firm resource to be managed, and to use this as the foundation for more appropriate application of a wide range of current management techniques.