Search results

Mobile devices are increasingly prevalent and may have large ramifications for social studies education, but there has been limited research as to their effectiveness. This study utilized an Apple iPad to explore how a specific application (Explore 9/11) impacted secondary student interactions with primary source narratives and their influence on historical empathy during a War on Terrorism unit in a United States history course. Three sections utilized the iPad, while two used resources found on the iPad, but not the iPad itself. The study found that students using mobile devices had positive experiences in interacting with primary source documents. Students, further, were able to develop a sense of historical empathy as they came across the firsthand accounts of seven individuals’ experiences on September 11, 2001 regardless of whether or not they used the iPads. These findings, as well as their implications for social studies education are discussed.

This study explores how one novice teacher navigated his first-year teaching sixth-grade social studies.

One-sixth grade novice teacher was observed during his unit on the Islamic Empire. The teacher was interviewed before the unit began to understand his approach to combating Islamophobia and interviewed again after the unit so he could reflect on the unit and discuss if he believed he had accomplished his original goal. Classroom artifacts (handouts, slide decks, etc.) were collected.

The findings highlight the various forces that impacted the decisions the teacher made in the classroom. Lack of support from administration and various colleagues left the teacher feeling overwhelmed and unable to accomplish his goals. While the teacher started the unit with a clear purpose for teaching against Islamophobia, he ultimately taught a unit where students memorized discrete pieces of information.

This study adds to previous research on the need for providing administrative support for novice teachers to be able to teach in ambitious ways by highlighting the numerous shortcomings.

In 1976, amid the vastly greater celebrations of the bicentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, there was the greatest orgy of historical nostalgia in the history of economics, occasioned by the bi‐centenary of the Wealth of Nations. In addition to a veritable deluge of scholarly books, articles, pamphlets, conferences, and symposia, and also innumerable popular and ephemeral effusions, all the mass media were enlisted. There were countless magazine and newspaper articles, some radio and T.V. programs, at least one especially commissioned technicolor film and, for all I know, there may also have been bicentennial poems, paintings, sculptures, and choral symphones!

Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.

Calls for corporate social responsibility are widespread, yet there is no consensus about what it means; this may be its charm. However, it is possible to distinguish the fi duciary obligations owed to shareholders, as expressed by Milton Friedman, from all other paradigms of corporate responsibility. Friedman maintains that: “ ...there is one and only one social responsibility of business‐to‐use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud.” All other paradigms argue that corporations have social responsibilities that extend beyond the pursuit of shareholder benefits to stakeholders. The list of cited stakeholders is ill‐defined and expanding, including non‐human animals and non‐sentient things. This paper defends the intellectual and ethical merits of fiduciary duties, and compares and contrasts it to the stakeholder paradigm. The fiduciary duty to firms’ owners is the bedrock of capitalism, and capitalism will wither without it.

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of its own. In this paper, I examine the worldwide diffusion and sociocultural history of this paradigmatic expression. The intent is to explore the ways in which ideas of time and money appear in sedimented form in popular sayings.

My approach is sociological in orientation and multidisciplinary in method. Drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Wolfgang Mieder, and Dean Wolfe Manders, I explore the global spread of Ben Franklin’s famed adage in three ways: (1) via evidence from the field of “paremiology” – that is, the study of proverbs; (2) via online searches for the phrase “Time is Money” in 30-plus languages; and (3) via evidence from sociological and historical research.

The conviction that “Time is Money” has won global assent on an ever-expanding basis for more than 250 years now. In recent years, this phrase has reverberated to the far corners of the world in literally dozens of languages – above all, in the languages of Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Methodologically, this study unites several different ways of exploring the globalization of the capitalist spirit. The main substantive implication is that, as capitalism goes global, so too does the capitalist spirit. Evidence from popular sayings gives us a new foothold for insight into questions of this kind.

Although markets prevail throughout the world, there are significant differences in the economic, social, political as well as legal institutions in which these markets function. Many of these variations can be attributed in part to differences in levels of economic development and in part to the differing consensus about the role of corporations and of governments in the various countries. The paper compares the models of private market economy and social market economy. An understanding of the rules underlying private market economy and those governing social market economy is important in the context of of the evoloving new global economic architecture.

This poem aims to explore corporate ideology.

It is a fictional poem.

The poem suggests that a capitalist perspective diminishes social and environmental possibility.

The poem invites renewed reflection on the influence of corporate values.

The poem draws on the story of Genesis to highlight salient aspects of capitalist culture.

Economic as well as ethical aspects of discrimination and other forms of injustice in the context of a nation’s economy have been discussed by scholars for many decades. However, until relatively recent times, much attention has not been given – especially by economists – to discrimination and injustice in the international context. At least since 1961, several works in Catholic social thought have addressed the issues of injustice as well as poverty and inequality among countries. Discusses the social economics of discrimination and other forms of injustice in the international context. After a brief introduction, presents some views on injustice in the international economy and some empirical evidence. Briefly discusses the way mainstream economics mostly avoids discussion about injustice. Follows by looking at social economists’ perspective on injustice, also giving remarks on how some documents comprising Catholic social thought discuss injustice in the context of international development. Concludes with observations on how distribution/justice issues could be incorporated in discussions dominated by growth/development objectives.

The shift to the fourth industrial revolution presents new sustainable development challenges. The externalities of the second and third industrial revolutions were related to the degradation of the biosphere. It is suggested that the externalities of the fourth industrial revolution, underpinned by artificial intelligence, are extending the repertoire of externalities to include the degradation and manipulation of cognition and by extension the fabric of society. The implications for South Africa’s transformation within the fourth industrial revolution are highlighted. It is shown that digital nudging and choice architecture are tools that are capable of maximising profit while externalising social value through the algorithmic manipulation of our decision-making processes. The case for an alternative explanatory framework is presented because the limitations of the prevailing conception of physical reality appear unable to adequately resolve these super-wicked problems. Constructor theory is introduced as an alternative explanatory framework, and the constructor-theoretic conception is suggested as an ontological framework that will provide better explanations. Some principles of the theory are introduced.