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Many older adults engage in volunteer activities, drawing meaning and purpose through such efforts. Social distancing restrictions, put in place during Covid-19 surges to reduce the risk of transmission, disrupted older adult volunteers’ lives and volunteer experiences. Social distancing measures provide a unique opportunity to explore what happened when the choices around pausing or stopping volunteering were not entirely within the control of older adults. This paper aims to explore the experiences of older adult volunteers as they navigated uncertainties and made difficult decisions around balancing their safety and their desire to continue volunteering.

The authors conducted interviews with 26 community-dwelling older adults, age 50+, who had engaged in volunteer activities for at least 1 h a week prior to the start of the pandemic. The interviews were conducted on the phone or via Zoom. The authors used thematic analysis to help us analyze the data and identify patterns from participants’ experiences.

Despite the risk presented by Covid-19, most participants volunteered during the pandemic. They continued some or all of their previous activities with safety-related adjustments, with some seeking new or different opportunities. Participants’ discussions highlight the challenges of volunteering during the pandemic and the importance of engagement to their resiliency and subjective well-being.

This paper provides original contributions to understanding how and why older adults volunteered during the Covid-19 pandemic. The social distancing measures provide a novel opportunity to enrich our understanding of the meaningfulness and value of volunteerism to older adults’ lives and subjective well-being.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.

In an effort to impart and demonstrate the importance to my pre-service teachers of creating a curriculum that encourages inquiry, infuses technology, utilizes authentic means of assessment, and pushes for a critical stance, I asked them to construct a multigenre research project. Through this process, students learned specific and transferable skills for creating a classroom environment that leaps past rote memorization of isolated skills and into deep-level, cultural understandings that promote the development of informed and contributive citizens.

In a qualitative study, 50 pre-service teachers were partnered with 50 elementary students to write each other in dialogue journals responding to texts on public issues. Based upon our analysis of the journals, written reflections from pre-service teachers, and interviews with the elementary teachers in the project, three findings emerged: student motivation for reading and writing increased, both types of students gained perspective consciousness, and elementary teachers found meaningful ways to integrate social studies with language arts. These findings suggest multiple avenues for future research surrounding dialogue journals, student engagement with public issues texts, and teacher education.

In this article, the authors report the results of their pre-service teachers’ reflections with regards to observed social studies instruction in kindergarten through sixth grade. Fifty-seven elementary education majors were in enrolled in a social studies methods course at a university located in the South. Pre-service teachers share the type of instruction observed, comments stated by their classroom teacher about social studies as well as their overall perceptions. Reflections indicate social studies is taught inconsistently across grades levels, best practices were not used for instruction, and a trend in decreased social studies instruction. Thus, classroom teachers exhibited frustration because of these issues.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder with lifetime prevalence of 7.8%, is characterized by symptoms that develop following exposure to traumatic life events and that cause an immediate experience of intense fear, helplessness or horror. PTSD is marked by recurrent nightmares typified by the recall of intrusive experiences and by extended disturbance throughout sleep. Individuals with PTSD respond poorly to drug treatments for insomnia. The disadvantages of drug treatment for insomnia underline the importance of non-pharmacological alternatives. Thus, the present study had three aims: first, to compare the efficiency of two relaxation techniques (muscular relaxation and progressive music relaxation) in alleviating insomnia among individuals with PTSD using both objective and subjective measures of sleep quality; second, to examine whether these two techniques have different effects on psychological indicators of PTSD, such as depression and anxiety; and finally, to examine how initial PTSD symptom severity and baseline emotional measures are related to the efficiency of these two relaxation methods. Thirteen PTSD patients with no other major psychiatric or neurological disorders participated in the study. The study comprised one seven-day running-in, no-treatment period, followed by two seven-day experimental periods. The treatments constituted either music relaxation or muscle relaxation techniques at desired bedtime. These treatments were randomly assigned. During each of these three experimental periods, subjects' sleep was continuously monitored with a wrist actigraph (Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc.), and subjects were asked to fill out several questionnaires concerned with a wide spectrum of issues, such as sleep, depression, and anxiety. Analyses revealed a significant increase in objective and subjective sleep efficiency and a significant reduction in depression level following music relaxation. Moreover, following music relaxation, a highly significant negative correlation was found between improvement in objective sleep efficiency and reduction in depression scale. The study‘s findings provide evidence that music relaxation at bedtime can be used as treatment for insomnia among individuals with PTSD.

This article examines the literature related to the marginalization of social studies through the lens of elementary social studies teacher education. This study presents the case of two different states wherein one state, Virginia, tests social studies in elementary schools and another state, North Carolina, where social studies is not tested until middle school. The data gathered from both states were originally analyzed to shed light on the question of testing's effect on teacher preparation and subsequent curriculum enactment. Data collected from the study suggest that factors such as field experiences, programs of study, and methods instruction impact teacher education in elementary social studies in more important ways than student testing.

In an effort to address health care disparities, U.S. laws mandate that health care organizations provide free language interpreting and translation anytime a patient and health care provider cannot communicate in the same language. The heretofore absence of legislative and professional oversight in health care interpreting allows for anyone to interpret. A qualitative study was conducted to understand the conditions and practices of bilingual staff who interpret as a secondary part of their job in community health clinics.

Four focus groups were conducted as part of a study on shared decision-making during interpreted medical visits in a busy, urban clinic serving a large number of limited English proficient (LEP) patients. The focus groups were designed to understand the process of interpreting and how interpreters influence medical decisions between LEP patients and their health care providers. To understand the interpreting process from multiple perspectives, one focus group was conducted with users of interpreters – monolingual health care providers (N=6), two with Spanish speaking men (N=10) who were experienced with interpreted health visits, and one with bilingual staff (N=5) who interpret as an ad hoc feature of their job, also known as dual-role medical interpreters.

Dual-role interpreters use different styles while interpreting what is communicated between health care providers and patients. In some cases, they provide near word-for-word interpretation of what is said. In other cases, they summarize and or paraphrase multiple sentences, seek clarity through questions, and deconstruct culturally laden and technical terms. In still other cases, dual-role interpreters combine interpretation styles within a single interactional exchange. Each of the three major styles of interpreting has advantages in medical settings. Specific style is influenced by health care provider preference, interpreter–health care provider trust and familiarity, and interpreter medical knowledge. Interpreters are challenged by the patients’ dialects, educational level, provider personalities, gender issues, and out of clinic relationships with the patients. Contextual conditions and contingencies of reinforcement contributed to varying methods of interpretation. These conditions included organizational policies, language and bilingual communication, and social relations with both the health care providers and the patients.

These findings demonstrate the complexity of medical interpretation and the critical involvement of health care providers and bilingual staff in facilitating interpreted encounters. Findings suggest the need for training both health care providers and interpreters and possible change in reimbursement for services.

This action research study explores how the multigenre research project develops historical empathy, or historical perspective taking skills, in a class of 22 fourth grade students. Much of the research in these areas focuses on the high school and university level. However, this study explored the degree to which upper elementary students were able to recognize historical perspectives, and whether the multigenre project format was conducive to developing this particular skill. The students in the study selected a historical topic from a list of historical subjects, then researched this topic, and displayed what they learned through multiple genres. The action researcher found that the multigenre research project increased students’ understanding of the differences in historical perspectives.

This study sought to identify teachers' overall experiences in teaching social studies, the considerations they make in planning and implementing social studies lessons in the absence of mandated curriculum, approaches to social studies instruction and the role of legislation on social studies instruction.

Two practicing teachers at different grade levels participated in this study to allow for comparative case study analysis. Teachers were observed teaching social studies lessons and then were interviewed to gain an understanding of their perspectives on teaching social studies at the elementary level and the role that administrative and legislative messaging played in their decision-making.

The lack of a scripted and formal program for social studies created opportunities for teacher autonomy and content integration in lessons. This is especially true for teachers that place a high value on social studies content and skills. Persistent issues, such as limited time and mandated testing pressures, continue to create barriers that teachers must work to overcome.

Since teachers play a critical role in the enactment of policy and curriculum, when a formal curriculum program is absent, opportunities arise. Control of the classroom and inherent messaging therein continues to create a high value battleground. When teachers are given the autonomy to set lesson outcomes, opportunities for quality instruction, such as project based learning and content integration, are possible.