This action research study honors teacher-as-researcher and utilizes qualitative methods of data collection alongside emergent design to study arts-integrated teaching and learning at a mid-sized Midwestern university in a social studies methods course. The thinking and learning of both pre-service teachers and the teacher educator/researcher are analyzed using constructivist grounded theory, constant comparative and art-based methods. Findings offer a holistic view of teaching and learning including: (1) pre-service teachers' learning experiences as developing social studies classroom teachers and arts-integrated learners to expand capacity in order to see and think differently, communicate and express their thinking and learning diversely, and to engage challenges and discomfort divergently within alternative, transformative pedagogical practices; and (2) the teacher educator/researcher's learning experiences to expand capacity in developing a meta-teaching action plan toward teaching the arts-integrated social studies methods course and altering the process of the dialectic action research spiral within action research to become the dialectic action research lemniscate. Implications relevant in social studies teacher education and secondary social studies education include, transformative learning experiences and expanded capacity for pre-service teachers as they developed altered perspectives about arts-integrated teaching and learning as well as teaching civics/citizenship and engaging civic issues of equity and justice in the social studies and the early development of a partial framework for arts-integrated teaching and learning in social studies education. Implications germane to action research methodology reside in modifying the process of the dialectic action research spiral in offering the expanded capacity of the dialectic action research lemniscate as an alternative recursive process for action researchers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]