Preparing Graduate Students in Economics for Teaching: Survey Findings and Recommendations

Survey data from PhD-granting economics departments are used to assess the teaching preparation of graduate students in economics. The results show that relatively few departments require graduate student instructors to take a credit course in teaching before teaching their own course or leading a recitation section. Although more graduate student instructors are required to take a noncredit course in teaching before serving as an instructor or recitation leader, the value of such noncredit courses may be limited. The assessment of teaching preparation by department chairs shows mixed responses, with about three-fifths rating it as very good or good and about two-fifths considering it to be only adequate or poor. Recommendations are offered for improving the teaching preparation of graduate student instructors in economics.     

A Student Learning Inventory for Economics Based on the Students' Experience of Learning: A Preliminary Study

The authors present the initial development of a student learning inventory (SLI) that is specific to economics. This approach, which is based on the student experience of learning (SEL) literature, emphasizes aspects of prior knowledge in the learning history of entering first-year students. Preliminary insights from a first SLI suggest that on entry to university, students show considerable variation in their perceptions of what economics is and what economists do. From the SEL perspective, such variation affects student learning. It is argued that continued development of an economic-specific SLI may result in a better understanding of students' learning engagement with economics and ultimately assist instructors in better understanding student learning difficulties and increase student success in first-year economics.     

The Scholarship Assignment Problem

There are n graduate students and n faculty members. Each student will be assigned a scholarship by the joint faculty. The socially optimal outcome is that the best student should get the most prestigious scholarship, the second-best student should get the second most prestigious scholarship, and so on. The socially optimal outcome is common knowledge among all faculty members. Each professor wants one particular student to get the most prestigious scholarship and wants the remaining scholarships to be assigned according to the socially optimal outcome. We consider the problem of finding a mechanism such that in equilibrium, all scholarships are assigned according to the socially optimal outcome. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D70, D78.     

A Note on the Teaching of Economics Through American History

McConnell examines problems connected with measuring the readability of introductory economics textbooks and observes that an index of readability based on sentence length and the number of syllables per some given number of words may be deficient, misleading, and possibly counterproductive. In this connection, he observes that “virtually no work has been undertaken to determine whether the choice of textbook is a significant factor in determining student understanding and performance.” Research in this area might make it possible to substitute empirical evidence for what most instructors in their selection of a textbook attempt to intuit.     

The Case of the Missing Organizations: Co-operatives and the Textbooks

The author discusses the following seven issues affecting assessment of undergraduates in universities: decisionmaking and the selection of tests, the use of written and oral assignments to measure learning, the characteristics of grades and portfolios for evaluating students, opportunities for self-assessment and feedback to instructors, retention of learning and the testing for higher-ordered thinking, the psychology of students in the economics classroom, and the development of new tests as public goods. The author suggests ways that economics faculty can add new dimensions to their assessment practices, improve their understanding of assessment choices, use assessment to enhance the quality of student thinking, and conduct research studies on assessment questions.     

Catch 22 faculty tenure for public universities: new evidence employing Färe–Primont productivity indexes

With decreases in funding support, U.S. public universities have increasingly substituted less costly nontenure eligible faculty for tenured and tenure-track faculty while newly imposed funding mandates require evidence of productivity improvements tied to student graduation success. Universities have been forced into a Catch 22 dilemma as to what faculty mix produces optimal student/funding outcomes. To date, guidance provided by empirical evidence is mixed. This article offers new evidence employing Färe–Primont productivity indexes and parametric estimates to determine how faculty status affects graduation productivity. Results indicate that a reversal in the employment trend is in order so as to increase tenured relative to nontenure eligible faculty and improve student graduation success and, ultimately, university funding.     

Programmed Learning-Policy Analysis: An Experiment in Teaching Principles of Economics

Darnton reports on an experiment using programmed instruction in macroeconomics. He also explains how assignments to write “position papers” on economic policies are used. An analysis of the experiment deals with the time devoted to the course by students and instructor, student understanding of economics and student attitude toward this approach. The TUCE was used as the testing instrument, and Darnton asserts that the experimental group did better than the control group on complex application questions. The experimental approach proved to be popular with the students, and the author claims that it provided for a more efficient use of faculty resources.     

Impact of the economic downturn on nursing schools

The challenges posed by the economic downturn on baccalaureate nursing schools in the southeast as it relates to their perceptions of changes in the number of applicants, acceptance rates, employer recruitment efforts, and student clinical and job placement were explored. Responses from deans and program directors indicated nursing schools are experiencing negative effects of the economic downturn in the form of graduates having difficulty finding employment, decreased recruitment efforts from prospective employers, difficulty locating clinical placements for students, and no change in faculty applicants despite an increase in undergraduate student applicants as well as graduate student applicants. These multiple factors combined could signal the death knell for programs that are ill-prepared to deal with such a crisis. Programs need to be aggressive in their efforts to draw health care recruiters as well as qualified faculty applicants to their campuses. Nursing schools must be able to clearly show why their graduates are superior to other programs' graduates when competing for both highly qualified faculty applicants and prospective student employers.     

A Discrete-Time Hazard Analysis of the Role of Gender in Persistence in the Economics Major

So much has been done in terms of measuring the impact of economics courses on student knowledge and understanding of facts, concepts and principles, and so little research has dealt with the possible effects on student political attitudes, that this study by Scott and Rothman should be of great interest to economics instructors. The authors address themselves to George Stigler's assertion that “the education of an economist makes the person who receives it more conservative.” They report on the use of their own “Social Opinion Questionnaire” and how it was employed to investigate “the different effects, if any, introductory economics and introductory psychology have on opinions related to economic issues.”     

Nurturing nursing's future through nurse executive partnerships

At a time when nurses are becoming an endangered species, nurse executives have a unique opportunity to respond by forging new and responsive relationships with graduate students who express interest in nursing administration and leadership as a preferred career choice. In this article, a case example demonstrates how a senior faculty member and a graduate student formed a partnership, conducted research, and nurtured an appreciation of the nurse educator role. Using this experience, senior nurse executives can too form partnerships with graduate students as a way to recruit into nursing leadership roles.     

Are contingent instructors better teachers: evidence from a Chinese university

This paper evaluates the effects of contingent instructors on education outcomes in the context of higher education in developing countries. Exploiting the features of Chinese higher education system, we are able to exclude the confounding effects of student selection and heterogeneous marking standards. Although students of contingent instructors appear to perform as well as their fellow students taught by full-time instructors, we find the evidence that contingent instructors utilize lower marking standards, resulting an inflation of the scores of their students, which masks the negative impacts of their teaching. Our results suggest that contingent instructors have a significantly negative impact on education outcomes. While exposure to contingent instructors may affect the probability of students taking more challenging courses in the following term, the longer-term impacts on education outcomes are negligible.     

SYSTEMATIC INFLUENCES ON TEACHING EVALUATIONS: THE CASE FOR CAUTION*

In this paper, we examine eight years of Quality of Teaching (QOT) responses from an Economics Department in an Australian University. This is done to determine what factors, besides the instructor, have an impact on the raw average student evaluation scores. Most of the previous research on student ratings has been conducted in the US. One significant difference between US and Australian tertiary education is that, on average, the number of foreign undergraduate students in Australia is ten times the number in US institutions. We find that cultural background significantly affects student evaluations. Other factors that have an influence on the average QOT score include: year level; enrolment size; the quantitative nature of the subject; the gender of the student; fee‐paying status by gender; course of study; the differences between the course mark and previous marks; the quality of workbooks; the quality of textbooks; and the QOT score relative to those in other subjects taught at the same time. In addition, average QOT scores for instructors who have taught in a mix of subjects are similar to those based on scores adjusted to account for subject and student characteristics.     

A Statistical Interpretation of Student Evaluation Feedback: A Comment

Blackwell examines a paper on student evaluation of instructors by David Dilts which appeared in the Journal of Economic Education, Spring 1980. Although critical of the methods used in the article, he praises the intent of the paper and demonstrates that there are two ways of accomplishing what he believes was the intended purpose.     

Do China's people favour redistribution? Evidence from an incentivized experiment

From 1949, China's leaders brought their country through three decades of income and wealth compression, which was followed by more than three decades of sharply rising inequality. What preferences do China's people hold regarding what price (if any) is worth paying for greater equality? We conduct a laboratory decision‐making experiment mimicking aspects of a macro‐political–economic environment, using Chinese undergraduate student subjects. We find that our subjects have qualitatively similar tastes for equality as their counterparts in parallel US and European experiments; for example, most are willing to sacrifice some payment for more equality of earnings among other participants, and their willingness to do this is stronger when inequalities originate randomly versus based on performance. Considering the cases permitting direct comparison between Chinese and US subjects’ choices, redistributive choices tend to be a bit higher in China if the participant pays no direct cost and a bit lower if he or she pays such a cost, but the two distributions of decisions differ significantly in under 14% of conditions. Survey data too suggests preferences for a more equal income distribution in China than in other East Asian countries, suggesting a possible impact of the Chinese Communist Party dominance in education and media.     

Intermediate macroeconomics: The importance of being post Keynesian

Post Keynesians should not be afraid to teach what they believe represents the best explanation of macroeconomic fluctuations. Our colleagues in the mainstream certainly are not and, realistically speaking, it is hard to imagine that any student would be handicapped by not having had a full dose of IS-LM, the accelerationist hypothesis, Phillips Curves, and so on. Furthermore, there may not be a more opportune time to introduce post Keynesianism to undergraduate students with Neoclassicals still recovering from their inability to explain the financial crisis. This article argues for a post Keynesian-focused intermediate macroeconomics and offers a sample plan. It reviews the state of post-financial crisis mainstream macro teaching and references pedagogical literature in showing how a post Keynesian transformation and reorganization can be made most effective.     

高校辅导员高学历化及其职业发展

高校辅导员队伍逐渐呈现高学历化,其担任辅导员有其优势,也有其不足。高学历辅导员中有的在个人职业发展中存在着自我定位不准、缺乏明确的发展目标方向的问题。因此,高学历辅导员走职业化、专业化、专家化道路也未尝不是个好的职业发展方向。做好个人职业生涯规划对职业发展是十分必要的。     

Creating infographics to enhance student engagement and communication in health economics

In this article, the authors discuss and describe the implementation of and lessons learned from a course project centered on the creation of an infographic in a health economics course and an introduction to health research course. Students were asked to create a simple infographic about a particular topic, after researching and gathering data on that topic. The instructors observed how students synthesized information and data to tell a visual story with their infographic. This article adds to the limited literature regarding infographics in undergraduate instruction. An infographic offers faculty an opportunity to apply active learning strategies to enhance student engagement, retention of information, and communication skills.     

Online Teaching Resources: A New Journal Section

Most economics departments use end-of-term student evaluations of teaching, but the relationship between instructors' assessments of their own teaching and their students' assessments is unknown. The background survey for the nationally normed Test of Understanding in College Economics asked students and instructors to evaluate the instructor on five identical items. Using these data, the authors found that for instructors who speak English as their native language, speaking ability and enthusiasm are closely linked to self-ratings of teaching effectiveness. Students also value these traits but care more about instructors' preparation for class. Grading rigor is more important to students of instructors who speak English as a second language.     

Some Teaching Techniques for High School Economics

In this article two high school economics teachers describe several teaching techniques that have proven successful in their school. The use of a team approach is briefly explained, and the importance of student motivation is stressed. Among the methods included are skits, plays, the use of video tapes, simulations and games, and the analysis of important economic problems. The means by which the instructors are evaluating their course are set forth, with evidence that the experience helps to destroy commonly held myths about economics and greatly improves student understanding of basic principles.     

Teacher training for PhD students and new faculty in economics

Past studies suggest that a majority of economics graduate students engage in teaching-related activities during graduate school and many go on to academic positions afterwards. However, not all graduate students are formally prepared to teach while in graduate school nor are they fully prepared to teach in their first academic position. The authors characterize current teaching experience and training of graduate students from the point of view of directors of graduate studies and of newly minted academic economists. The authors also query department chairs and new faculty about teacher training, support available for new faculty, and the degree to which newly hired Ph.D. economists are prepared to teach. Findings indicate that while some training is available, there is room for enhancing teacher training in economics.