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The purpose of this conceptual article is to examine the role of villainification and heroification in social studies through critically analyzing the author’s place-based encounters with three civil war narratives.

The article describes the author’s critical reflections on three narratives involving confederate figures and examines theoretical and pedagogical implications.

The article introduces a spectrum of ethical judgments which plots villainification and heroification on opposing ends. The author advocates for more nuanced ethical judgments that contextualize decisions as understandable or defensible based on evidence. The term understandable reflects a concept of being able to explain (i.e. demonstrate understanding) why a curricular figure made certain choices without agreeing with or supporting those choices. The term defensible denotes the existence of evidence that provides a rationale for a choice such that the person making the ethical judgment would feel comfortable making (i.e. defending) the same choice.

The article introduces a theory of nuanced ethical judgments in social studies that maps onto existing literature on heroification, villainification and place-based education. Pedagogical implications for social studies education are also identified.

The authors describe an original unit plan that draws from local and national concerns for truthful history education about the history of racial violence in the United States. The unit plan contextualizes one impetus for truth and reconciliation in a community with a history of anti-Black violence.

The participants partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to pilot the unit in their district’s new African American History course. The unit drew on historical research and cultural memory to situate local history within a broader context of racism and violence.

The teachers identified eight goals for the unit so that students could understand racialized violence, acknowledge racism as the lived experience of many of their students, and participate in a collaborative learning environment with productive discussions. Speaking from their own experiences with racism, and creating opportunities for students to do the same, the teachers aided the community in voicing long-silenced memories.

Besides bridging some of the gaps between local, regional, and national histories, more research is needed to further examine historical trauma and its implications for both the past and present, in order to amplify and humanize experiences of racism. Additional research is a critical step in developing more thoughtful, empathic and holistic discussions of history and racism at the local level.

In the wake of the recent past, the authors have learned that teaching about the history of racial violence can be enhanced and empowered by reference to relevant current events. The resurgence of racially charged language and violence over the past few years makes this goal more urgent than ever. This unit gives practical guidance to teachers who face this challenge.

The sociopolitical reality of historical trauma and racism must be confronted, and proximity to key events is important in conveying the urgency of racial violence and the need for history education that addresses it. Teachers are making difficult decisions about their options for teaching about race, and they are understandably concerned about any perceived missteps. Nonetheless, inclusive, truthful history education is an appropriate and essential response to narratives of exclusion and silence as the authors help students to develop deliberative skills concerning difficult topics such as racial violence. Teachers and students, together, can do the crucial work of remembering.

The stripping away of narrative agency, identity and history can cover up stories about the stripping away of life and dignity. In the unit plan, the authors recognize truth and reconciliation—especially in the education of people who have relatively little exposure to topics of race and racism—as elemental to a restorative stance against racism.

This study aims to stimulate scholarly attention and practical application pertaining to individuals recognized as “Docs.” Through conducting a comprehensive analysis and acquiring a profound understanding of its many connotations, the objective is to shift attitudes and approaches concerning those who are seen to possess knowledge and value within society.

For this study, culturally relevant pedagogies were used as theoretical frameworks in addition to Sankofa and concept explication being used as methodologies.

The authors identified three themes: (1) honorary cultural practice-community nomination of “professahs” and “docs,” (2) (Black) robinhoods – cultural signifiers of distinction and relatability and (3) docs as catalysts – elevating community via consciousness, trust and mentorship as significant understandings of this distinction.

The study emphasizes the importance of “Docs” in both academic and social contexts. The role of “Docs” serves to alleviate potential conflicts of being a Black intellectual. This study further reveals the ways in which Docs align with, promote or possibly undermine established frameworks of thought. Finally, this study provides institutions with opportunities to consider strategies for the utilization, recognition and integration of individuals who are frequently overlooked or undervalued.

Risk information provides information to enable stakeholders to make informed decisions about a company. Corporate communications should be readable and unbiased so as not to hamper disclosure usefulness. This study assesses whether risk disclosures in the integrated reports are readable and unbiased.

The readability and narrative tone of South African listed companies' risk and risk management disclosures as disclosed in their integrated reports are analysed using automated software for the Top 40 JSE listed companies from 2015 to 2019.

The results show that risk and risk management disclosures are unreadable and lack any improvement in readability during the period. Additionally, these disclosures are biased toward narrative tones signalling communality and certainty.

The study adds to the literature on the readability of corporate reports, by focussing on the readability and narrative tone of risk and risk management disclosures during a period of increased scrutiny over the content of such disclosures. Also, by analysing risk disclosure and risk management disclosure separately, and by performing trend analysis to determine whether requirement changes related to content (specifically King IV) affect readability and narrative tones.

Preservice teachers (n = 39) described their definitions of patriotism and to what extent they believed statements from The 1619 Project (2019) and The 1776 Commission Report (2021) were patriotic.

This study employed a mixed-method survey including open-ended prompts requesting participants’ descriptions of patriotism and Likert scale prompts asking participants to agree/disagree with deidentified statements from The 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission Report. In vivo words reflecting emotional responses to patriotism and the statements informed the categorization process in a second round of coding.

Four categories of patriotism definition were identified. Identified were relationships between groups’ conceptualizations of patriotism and whether statements from history narratives were viewed as patriotic.

This article contributes to the field by exploring the intersectionality of the concept of patriotism with competing narratives regarding the foundation and growth of the United States.

The field of broad-based employee ownership within corporations is a specific application of the foundational topic of property ownership. It is situated at the intersection of a broad range of scholarly disciplines including economics, law, finance and management. Each discipline contributes vocabulary and distinctions describing this field. That broad spectrum of disciplinary inquiry is a strength but it also lends a “ships passing in the night” quality to discussions of employee ownership. This paper attempts to unravel the narrative diversity surrounding this topic. Four meanings of ownership are introduced. Those meanings are in turn embedded within two abstract models of the corporation; the corporation as property and the corporation as social institution.

There is no experimental design The paper presents a conceptual overview and introduces a taxonomy of four meanings and two models of ownership.

Four meanings of ownership are introduced. The meanings are ownership as compensation, investment, retirement and membership. Those meanings are in turn embedded within two abstract models of the corporation; the corporation as property and the corporation as social institution.

No hypotheses are advanced. This is not a research paper. A conceptual overview that makes use of taxonomy of meanings and models is introduced to help clarify confusions abundant in the field of employee ownership. Readers may differ with the categories of meanings and models introduced in this conceptual overview.

The ambition of the paper is to describe the various meanings and models of employee ownership presently in use in both academic and applied settings. It is not necessary or desirable to assert the primacy of a single meaning or model in order to achieve progress. The analysis provided here surfaces a range of assumptions about ownership that have heretofore been implicit in both scholarship and in practice. Making those assumptions explicit should prove useful to both scholars and practitioners of employee ownership.

The concept of employee ownership enjoys a relatively broad appeal with the public. Among the academic disciplines that have trained their lights upon it, a more mixed reception prevails. Much of the academic and policy controversy derives from confusion about the nature and structure of employee ownership. This paper attempts to address that confusion by presenting a taxonomy of meanings and models that may prove useful for future research.

This study is one of the first efforts to comprehinsively map the various meanings and models of broad-based employee ownership.

Social media (SM) platforms tempt individuals to communicate their perspectives in real-time, rousing engaging discussions on countless topics. People, besides using these platforms to put up their problems and solutions, also share activist content (AC). This study aims to understand why people participate in activist AC sharing on SM by investigating factors related to planned and unplanned human behaviour.

The study adopted a quantitative approach and administered a close-ended structured questionnaire to gather data from 431 respondents who shared AC on Facebook. The data was analysed using hierarchical regression in SPSS.

The study found a significant influence of both planned (perceived social gains (PSGs) , altruism and perceived knowledge (PK)) and unplanned (extraversion and impulsiveness) human behaviour on activist content-sharing behaviour on SM. The moderating effect of enculturation and general public opinion (GPO) was also examined.

Sharing AC on SM is not like sharing other forms of content such as holiday recommendations – the former can provoke consequences (sometimes undesirable) in some regions. Such content can easily leverage the firehose of deception, maximising the vulnerability of those involved. This work, by relating human behaviour to AC sharing on SM, offers significant insights to enable individuals to manage their shared content and waning probable consequences.

This work combined two opposite constructs of human behaviour: planned and unplanned to explain individual behaviour in a specific context of AC sharing on SM.

This study aims to analyse the attempts of taught master course students' publications from actor-network theoretic (ANT) perspectives based on the authors' experiences.

In this study, self-study was chosen as the research method. Self-study is a qualitative research approach based on autobiography, available materials, narratives or memory-work for researchers to investigate their own practice from professional and personal experiences and work with critical friends. In this study, self-study was conducted based on the reflective narratives of three authors (the students, Authors 1 and 2, and the lecturer, Author 3), which aims to examine the meanings and explanations of the authors' ordinary experiences and investigate a variety of their emotional memories.

By drawing on ANT, this study explored how the authors translated the assignment tasks into publications by negotiating and interacting with various human and non-human actors – academic journals. The journal articles, however, were not solely the outcome of the academic endevours of the authors. Instead, the journals played a role in helping the authors learn about the academic rigour and gain confidence in their own capabilities. Further, the journals also reinforced the academic partnerships between the authors through collaboration on drafting and revising their manuscripts.

Firstly, this process of helping students publish their papers should focus on their learning and experience rather than merely promoting competition. Additionally, the importance of reaching an agreement on role division and collaborative work ethics needs to be emphasised.

As publications have become increasingly important for graduate students, this study sheds light on the experience of taught master's course students (TMCSs) and their lecturer in jointly publishing papers. While doctoral student publications have received significant attention, TMCSs' publications have not been extensively studied, making this research valuable and original.

Drawing on a theoretical framework of sustainable career ecosystem theory, our paper aims to consider how domestic and international postgraduates can enhance their employability through participation in a landscape of practice.

The study employed an exploratory, longitudinal case study design to capture students' lived experiences on an 18-month Master of Professional Practice course at a higher education institution in New Zealand. The data collection procedure involved field note observations (months 1–4), a focus group (month 13) and narrative frames (months 16–18). The sample was domestic students from New Zealand (n = 2) and international students from Asia (n = 5).

One’s participation in multiple communities of practice represents their landscape of practice and a commitment to lifewide learning. Through participation in various communities of practice, domestic and international students can enhance their employability in three ways: (1) boundary encounters to develop social capital, (2) transcending contexts to enhance cultural capital, and (3) acknowledging the development of psychological capital and career agency.

Our work offers one of the earliest empirical validations of sustainable career ecosystem theory. Expressly, communities of practice represent various contexts whereby employability capital is developed over time. Additionally, the postgraduate students themselves are portrayed as interconnected and interdependent actors, presenting a novel framing of such dependencies at the micro-level of the ecosystem. The practical implications come from informing universities of the value of a landscape of practice to enhance the employability of domestic and international students in preparation for sustainable careers and to promote the sustainability of the career ecosystem.

The paper aims to elaborate on the potential for regeneration of Bagamoyo (Tanzania) through adaptive reuse of its heritage sites. The town was the most important harbour for ivory and slaves of the East-African mainland during the 19th and early 20th century and the colonial capital of German East-Africa between 1885 and 1890. Today, it has 85,000 inhabitants who mainly live in informal settlements while stone town closer to the coast is largely abandoned with its historical buildings in a poor state of conservation.

The first part of the paper describes the history and heritage of the old stone town Bagamoyo, and how it impacts its identity. Additionally, it summarises the critical reception of the town's role in the application to UNESCO World Heritage for “The Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route”. This, in order to consider the reuse of its heritage sites more as part of a layered regeneration process than of a singular narrative for preservation. The second part presents research-by-design proposals investigating the economic, social and cultural potentialities of three spatial layers: the main street, the coastal strip and the shoreline.

The identity and therefore also urban regeneration of post-colonial towns such as Bagamoyo is the result of a complex combination of different narratives rather than of a singular one.

Bagamoyo's heritage has been studied as a driver for international tourism linked to slavery but without successful implementation. This study proposes an alternative perspective by investigating its potential for urban regeneration in line with local needs. Developed in the context of a master studio of architectural design, it presents an innovative didactic approach. Moreover, the methodology of research-by-design can be inspirational for other historical towns.