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The goal for social studies teachers is to offer an array of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that fulfill the ten National Council for the Social Studies standards. Powerful learning should be facilitated as specific social studies lessons, integrated across the curriculum, demonstrated throughout social interactions, and should reflect proficiencies as critical thinkers, decision makers, and problem solvers. Engaging in learning experiences within a multitude of contexts increases learners’ abilities to understand and accept themselves, one another, and society as they develop cultural competence. To advance teachers’ and young learners’ comprehension of these expectations, we share a four-part learning experience grounded on the word RESPECT, which serves as the acronym for navigating cultural competence, self-efficacy, and moral development in the classroom. Using the story, “The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss, participants are guided through a series of hands-on experiences illustrative of social studies that is honest, natural, authentic, and holistic.

The purpose of this study was to examine the dimensions of athletic star power associated with Generation Y sports consumption. Multivariate analyses revealed that athletic star power factors (Professional Trustworthiness, Likeable Personality, Athletic Expertise, Social Attractiveness and Characteristic Style) were positively (p < .05) predictive of the sport consumption factors (Event Consumption and Merchandise Consumption).

Teaching complex economic theories can be made relevant through everyday life experiences and current economic, social, and environmental crises can be used as vehicles for student learning. The purpose of this paper is to help students understand that the economy should be seen as a social system that evolves over time driven by conflictive and contradictory forces and enable them to develop the critical thinking skills needed to make better choices for a more equitable and sustainable future.

The paper reviews the historical role played by neoliberalism on education in general and on the teaching of economics in particular. A historical/critical/action-learning approach discusses five pedagogical teaching methods that have been implemented in undergraduate economics courses and demonstrates how teaching social economics can be made possible by bringing the real world into the classroom and taking the classroom into the real world.

There is an urgent need to rethink the teaching of economics and the economics curriculum from one that stresses self-interest, profit maximization and cost minimization, to one that stresses cooperation, collaboration, fairness, and ethical values rather than economic value, as ways of satisfying society’s needs and addressing systemic issues of inequality, power and greed. Bringing teachers and students together in collaborative learning environments, thereby learning from the mistakes of the past and minimizing the impacts of the present so that future generations can also participate, is the much-needed change in how social economics can be taught post-financial crisis.

This paper is a response to the special issue on the theme teaching social economics during the global financial crisis. The authors have provided insights into their teaching pedgagogy in the context of this topic.