Trickle down economics is a fallacious metaphor that hurts working people and the civic commons. In this paper, we discuss the role and impact metaphors have in economics education. We explore the stickiness of “truthy”, but ultimately false, metaphors and offer to economics educators alternative metaphors with which to displace this problematic metaphorical language. In its place, we propose a restorying of this fiction to tell a more truthful story in economics classrooms using the dual metaphors of evaporative economics and economic desertification. We end by identifying the limitations of metaphorical language in the teaching of complex economic concepts, even while we recognize the power of these tools to elicit engagement in and with economics content that has real and lasting impacts on individuals and communities.

The more than 200 years of chattel slavery in Canada is an example of the country’s occluded history predicated on structural racism. This study of preservice elementary teachers in a social studies methods course helps to reveal how the history of Black enslavement in Canada has been effectively erased from the national consciousness. Using a symbolic interactionism/grounded theory methodology, I seek to make meaning from more than 70 preservice teachers’ written responses to a reading on slavery and abolition in Canada. This study’s findings help reveal some of the challenges to, and possibilities for, interrogating historical consciousness and national identity narratives as a process of learning within the contexts of methods courses.

Treaty 7 Territory on the lands of the Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot), where I am helping to train the next generation of truly excellent elementary and secondary teachers.I am lucky to live in the city of my birth.My ultimate goal is to foster in new teachers the skills and passion they need to become the finest educators the profession has to offer.A part of that goal is wanting teachers to have access to important research that is practically oriented.I am interested in socioeconomic equity, political theory, and simulations.My own professional development efforts have been focused on learning from Indigenous Elders and Traditional Knowledge Keepers.Outside of my professional pursuits, I am a partner to an awesome midwife, Jenn, with whom I parent three little ones, I enjoy board and role-playing games, and playing ice-and fantasy-hockey, and a good IPA.I have been fortunate to travel to more than 50 countries, and lived in the United States for eleven years, where I taught high school social studies for six of them.

In this chapter I argue that children should know where meat comes from. Further, children should be engaged in the discussion not only about whether humans should be eating meat, but also how we should be treating nonhuman animals. This issue provides teachers with a series of challenges, not least of which are concerns about how families might react if students decided on their own to give up eating meat. Meat-eating, as I note in the chapter is considered sacrosanct, even while the practices humans engage in to continue to eat meat on the scale that North Americans do raise both challenges and moral quandaries that children should be equipped to grapple with. I provide readers with ways to think about this issue, as well as many resources that can help shape and guide their teaching of this topic in meaningful depth.

Although we have progressed a long way in performing in vitro fertilization, one hurdle that still remains is the assessment of embryos. The aim of the current paper was to evaluate an embryo selection protocol based on the presence of high implantation potential (HIP) embryos on Day 3 embryo transfer outcomes.The analysis of cycles from 6573 IVF cycles in a private fertility clinic was done. Patients included IVF couples having day 3 embryos transferred. Rates of clinical pregnancy, twinning, and high order multiples (HOM) were investigated.When one or more HIP embryos were present in the cohort, there were no significant differences in clinical pregnancy rates when the decision was made to reduce the scheduled number of embryos to transfer by 1, that is, when comparing 2 embryos transferred with 2 reduced to 1, 3 with 3 reduced to 2, or 4 with 4 reduced to 3. Twinning rates were the same when at least 2 embryos were transferred and high order multiple rates were not different when at least 3 embryos were transferred. The presence of HIP embryos increases the chance of pregnancy when 1–2 embryos are transferred. With 3–4 embryos, the presence or absence of a HIP embryo becomes less of a factor in establishing pregnancy.Selecting HIP embryos can reduce the number of embryos transferred without adversely affecting pregnancy rates. Their presence is a strong predictor of pregnancy in patients ≤37 years old.

Teachers, many of whom are trained to lead their students through learning activities, as a director of learning processes may find that they struggle to use simulations. Simulations—dynamic, chaordic, and often unpredictable—tax the conventional model of classroom leadership; they require instead a leadership model that is flexible, responsive, and equally dynamic. Simulations are activities that typically represent processes or systems that flow and develop from their own inertia. Teachers who use this approach to learning need not be involved as overtly in the process of the simulation as they do with more traditional teaching activities. Yet, it can be difficult for teachers to reimagine a leadership role that largely removes them from the activity. As a result, they may impose themselves in ways that are disruptive to the natural flow of the simulation. In this paper, I propose a conceptual framework to help teachers reimagine their role as leaders in simulations. This framework draws on work in the field of behavioral economics to help teachers to engage in the simulation leadership process less directly and yet more effectively by adopting a leadership approach based in libertarian paternalism through the use of design architectures.

Simulations are of growing interest within the social studies in terms of research and practice. Although the findings of early research were unfavorable to simulations in terms of student learning, recent research has revealed new and interesting findings related to different domains of student learning that earlier research did not. In light of these conceptual and practical findings, it is important that teachers be granted access to the growth of knowledge in this burgeoning area of inquiry. To date, few scholars have disseminated to teachers the findings of existing research about simulations as it pertains to student learning, and to practitioners’ planning and practice. In this article, I provide an account of research on simulation that will be helpful to teachers. The paper includes five critical areas that seek to help teachers better understand what simulations are, their affordances and challenges, as well as suggestions relating to the implications for teachers’ curricular planning and implementation of simulations in their classrooms.

There is a growing recognition in society that more needs to be done to support LGBTQ youth in schools. In particular, school climate reports reveal that this need is particularly pressing for transgender individuals who are little understood and often rendered invisible or made to conform to gender-normative social standards. This mixed methods study surveyed and interviewed preservice teachers at three Catholic institutions. In particular, we focus on the shifting landscape of Catholic education in Canada as it relates to the support of transgender youth. The content of the study is framed by a common first grade social studies theme: family diversity, and takes its lead from the recent papal urging to pursue topics of discomfort at the peripheries of Catholic thinking. We explore how Catholic preservice teachers respond to the idea of teaching about transgender-parent families. The findings show there is dissonance between the personal and professional beliefs of new Catholic teachers. This dissonance is reflective of the beliefs held by North American Catholics at large, thus further illuminating the challenges and opportunities that are present in the emerging discussion about how to best support transgender students in Catholic school contexts.

The theoretical justification for enactivist approaches to learning is just beginning to emerge, and remains largely theoretical. Enactivism conceptualized as play beings us closer to the heart of the question about how play-based social studies might look. Recent research in simulations and gamesforms of playhelp to reveal some of the potential of the enacted domain. This paper attends to the (inter)subjective perspectives and lived experiences of two veteran middle school teachers who use play as a regularly occurring feature in their social studies teaching classes, which they co-construct and co-teach. Using a basic interpretive approach to research, this paper serves to highlight these perspectives and experiences as related by the participants in an effort to contextualize a highly theoretical approach to learning. Throughout this study, participants revealed their perceptions that the pedagogies of play are challenging but invaluable tools with which to approach social studies teaching. In doing so, this paper will help to illuminate some potential promises and pitfalls that an enactivist approach to social studies presents for the teachers.

Simulation research has become a growing area of interest in the social studies in recent years. Problematically, the term simulation is used without consistency among practitioners and researchers. The conceptual confusion regarding what simulations are (or are not) muddies the field and makes it difficult for scholars to make sense of this phenomenon or to talk about simulations across findings. In order to bring clarity to the field, this paper is framed around two conceptual and analytic constructs: conceptual analysis and the theory of language games. In this paper, I will provide a rationale for why the social studies field requires a specific definition for simulations. Next, simulations will be defined using four specific criteria: verisimilitude, dynamism, active human agents, and pedagogical mediation. Finally, simulations will be differentiated from three related phenomena with which they are often conflated: games, role-plays, and models.

Pre-service teachers need to understand how to support ELLs in their future classrooms, yet evidence suggests that pre-service ELL training may not be as effective as we need it to be. One promising strategy for increasing pre-service teachers' efficacy and knowledge around teaching ELLs is through a shock-and-show simulation. This strategy incorporates a Swedish-language immersion experience that simulates what it may like to be an ELL and the strategies that can help support these students. There were two phases: a lesson with limited scaffolding (shock) and an extensively scaffolded lesson (show). Our participants included 87 pre-service teachers who filled out pre-and post-surveys, including closed- and open-ended questions. t-Tests were used to determine whether differences in the scores from the two surveys were significant. We analyzed qualitative data using an interpretive approach to the development of codes, categories, and themes, which we triangulated with descriptive statistics to describe the frequency of the emergent codes. Our findings suggest that shock-and-show experiences may benefit pre-service teachers' knowledge and efficacy around ELL instruction. We theorize that the emotional component of the experience connected to the cognitive aspects may help foster greater learning among pre-service teachers concerning the difficulties and needs of ELLs.

This comparative case study presents one key challenge that 2 experienced teachers faced when using simulations: control. Simulations are activities that place high demands on teachers, including the ability to anticipate pitfalls in advance, act in multiple capacities, shape the direction of the activity without unduly interfering, and to be comfortable with the structured chaos that simulations engender. Together these demands strain teachers' restraint when it comes to control. Utilizing a series of interviews, observations, teacher visions of practice, and documents related to the simulations and context, data were collected on experienced teachers' perspectives and practices with simulations. As this article indicates, the use of simulations requires teachers to engage in (soft) control that is applied both subtly and conservatively to maintain simulation's dynamism, verisimilitude, and students' productive engagement. Without such discretion, (hard) control serves as a destructive form of intervention, serving to undermine these teachers' articulated goals. Although simulations are the instrument of this investigation, the findings presented in this article are relevant to the larger challenges social studies teachers face in their struggle with control as they aim to teach in more powerful and student-centered ways.