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This study of 65 elementary school teacher candidates enrolled in social studies methods classes examined attitudes toward currently contentious curriculum issues before and after participation in a practicum experience teaching an arts-integrated unit on Africa. These curriculum issues included arts-integrated project-based learning versus narrower skill-based lessons; the importance of creativity, leadership, organizational, and affective skills; and student-centered versus teacher-centered instruction. Attitudes were measured by teacher candidates placing themselves on each of ten continuums between endpoints representing opposing curriculum approaches and responding to open-ended questions. Statistically significant pre-post differences with medium effect sizes occurred on three of the continuums indicating that teacher candidates now placed greater value on arts-integrated curricula to teach social studies content; recognized that choice motivates students; and expressed more enjoyment of planning complex, long-term, student-centered projects. They recognized deep conceptual learning and engagement of elementary school students during the student-centered arts-integrated lessons but noted that the time and effort of complex project work were barriers to implementation. Social studies methods teachers need to involve teacher candidates in field experiences that offer authentic arts- integrated student-centered project work to allow them to adopt curriculum stances not experienced as elementary school students.

Given the current marginalization of social studies education in schools, this paper explores the social studies centered community-school model of Elsie Ripley Clapp, who was a significant educator, scholar, and leader within progressive education. A former graduate assistant of John Dewey, Clapp put progressive pedagogical ideology into practice in the 1920s and 1930s through her curriculum development and administrative leadership in rural schools such as: the Ballard School in Kentucky and the Arthurdale Schools in West Virginia. She developed a social studies focused, experiential curriculum rooted in her vision of schools as democratic spaces. First, biographical information about Clapp’s life, educational experiences, and commitment to social justice is provided. Second, Clapp’s community school model at the Ballard School is explored. The model, which united people across social class and centered on local history, geography, and economics, provides implications for how we might re-envision our current approaches to social studies education.

Arts-integrated social studies projects can provide meaningful learning about another culture; yet, they are rare in the current assessment-focused climate. Similarly, students are under-exposed to projects that involve spatial reasoning; nonetheless, this skill is important in everyday life and the workplace. This article describes a mixed-methods study of 65 (59 female, 6 male) pre-service elementary teachers in a social studies methods course reflecting on their participation in an African mask-making project with first and second graders that incorporated both arts integration and spatial reasoning. Pre-service teachers identified discussion with others, example masks and images, and taking time as the most helpful mask-making strategies. Most preservice teachers thought they would (42%) or possibly would (32%) implement mask making with their future elementary students because of deep, meaningful learning and active engagement they experienced and observed during the project. The authors concluded that pre-service teachers need multiple experiences with long-term arts-integrated projects that support the development of spatial skills to be confident enough to undertake them in their future classrooms and suggest that such projects be part of social studies methods courses.

Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal tells the story of the Deputy U.S. Marshal and former slave, Bass Reeves. Before reading, students will confront stereotypes they may have about the Old West. As they read the text, students will be encouraged to make text-to-text connections on how the Old West may be portrayed in other sources. A graphic organizer paired with a discussion will highlight student connections, understandings, questions, and reactions to the text. Lastly, students will create and share obituaries, honoring Bass Reeves’ accomplishments as an active citizen and his dedication to justice and equality.

After reading Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave, students will discuss the life of Dave and the issues he faced growing up as a slave and an artist. Students will practice using descriptive language to create their own interpretation of the illustrations of Dave’s experiences. Discussion of Dave’s powerful poetry and his active citizenship during a time of struggle allows students to dig deeper into the life of this inspiring individual. To conclude the lesson, students are encouraged to design and create an arts-based service-learning project based on the question, “How can we use our artistic talents to take action and help our community?”

The concept of an American Dream was interrogated during a service-learning partnership between university students and a multilingual, racially diverse class of sixth graders. The one-on-one service-learning partnerships were at the heart of the semester-long project and sought horizontalidad, or non-authoritarian democratic communication and shared knowledge creation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This project leveraged the arts and humanities within the context of social studies education to promote youth civic engagement. This project used Photovoice methodology in which all participants took photos and wrote about their American Dream. Participants then shared their photography and writing at three public gallery events in the community in an effort to educate others about their perspectives, experiences, and hopes regarding the American Dream.

Findings from the reciprocally minded partnership centered on the sixth-grade students taking a collective approach to the American Dream. Specifically, they noted their commitment to their families and desire to support others, with some sixth graders even sharing a commitment to promoting social justice. Some participants demonstrated a “we consciousness,” or a collective approach to social justice.

The study provides insights into how educators can engage middle school students in democratic practice as active citizens in a service-learning partnership. Through a service-learning themed project about the American Dream, middle school students were able to share their voices and experiences with the larger community via a project rooted in horizontalidad.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale to measure normative and informational influence in online traveler reviews.

Through proper scale development techniques and a two-sample validation process, the resulting 2-factor, 11-item scale yields a valid and reliable measure of social influence.

The resultant scale provides a tool for researchers to investigate the process whereby different characteristics of online reviews influence travel decisions.

Customer reviews are prevalent and powerful sources of influence on travel decisions. However, it is unclear how social influence manifests in today’s online purchasing environment. For several decades, the domain of social influence has played an important role in the advancements of consumer behavior and hospitality/tourism research. In particular, normative and informational influences are applicable, since online reviews contain numerous informational and normative cues. These principles were formulated under much different conditions than today’s purchasing environment. This research provides a way to measure normative and informational influence in the online review environment, thus enhancing the understanding of how reviews influence purchase decisions.

The purpose of this study is to consider how carer harm is understood, surfaced and responded to in contemporary policy, practice and research.

This paper offers a reflective commentary on the current “state of play” relating to carer harm drawing on existing research and related literature. This study focuses on how we define carer harm and what we know about its impact; lessons from, and for, practice and service provision; and (some) considerations for policy development and future research.

The authors highlight the importance of engaging with the gendered dimensions (and inequalities) that lie at the intersection of experience of care and violence and the need to move beyond binary conceptions of power (lessness) in family and intimate relationships over the life course. They suggest that changing how we think and talk about carer harm may support practitioners to better recognise the impact of direct and indirect forms of carer harm on carers without stigmatising or blaming people with care needs. The findings of this study also consider how carer harm is “hidden in plain sight” on two accounts. The issue falls through the gaps between, broadly, domestic abuse and adult and child safeguarding services; similarly, the nature and impact of harm is often kept private by carers who are fearful of the moral and practical consequences of sharing their experiences.

This study sets out recommendations to this effect and invites an ongoing conversation about how change for carers and families can be realised.

To investigate ethnographically how patient experience data, as a named category in healthcare organisations, is actively “made” through the co-creative interactions of data, people and meanings in English hospitals.

The authors draw on fieldnotes, interview recordings and transcripts produced from 13 months (2016–2017) of ethnographic research on patient experience data work at five acute English National Health Service (NHS) hospitals, including observation, chats, semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. Research sites were selected based on performance in a national Adult Inpatient Survey, location, size, willingness to participate and research burden. Using an analytical approach inspired by actor–network theory (ANT), the authors examine how data acquired meanings and were made to act by clinical and administrative staff during a type of meeting called a “learning session” at one of the hospital study sites.

The authors found that the processes of systematisation in healthcare organisations to act on patient feedback to improve to the quality of care, and involving frontline healthcare staff and their senior managers, produced shifting understandings of what counts as “data” and how to make changes in response to it. Their interactions produced multiple definitions of “experience”, “data” and “improvement” which came to co-exist in the same systematised encounter.

The article's distinctive contribution is to analyse how patient experience data gain particular attributes. It suggests that healthcare organisations and researchers should recognise that acting on data in standardised ways will constantly create new definitions and possibilities of such data, escaping organisational and scholarly attempts at mastery.