Gordon Tullock and Richard McKenzie. The New World of Economics.

The authors extend the literature on the efficacy of high school economics instruction in two directions. First, they assess how much economic knowledge that California students acquired in their compulsory high school course is retained on their entering college. Second, using as a control group some college students from the state of Washington, where there is no mandate for high school economics instruction, the authors evaluate the impact of California's high school economics mandate on students’ economic literacy when they enter college. The testing instrument is the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL).     

The Value of Advanced Interdisciplinary Classes for Students of Economics: Case Study of a 300-Level Class on Gender in the Economy

Interdisciplinary classes are valuable to students of economics for many reasons. This paper discusses three reasons why such classes, at an advanced level, are useful and important for students of economics. First, interdisciplinary classes have the potential to encourage theory building and critical thinking, especially through the use of primary sources. Second, interdisciplinary classes also provide students with a richer empirical understanding of the world, beyond the narrowly quantitative data used in most economics research. Fostering a ‘constructivist’ view of data, this facilitates future economists building the tools to tell marginalized stories. Lastly, interdisciplinary classes can create a diverse learning environment that facilitates peer learning about difficult subjects such as race, class, and gender. A case study of a 300-level class titled Gender in the Economy, in which a diverse group of students from backgrounds in women’s studies, economics, business, and American studies came together to study the economic history of gender, is used to explore such benefits.     

Economic Education in Schools and Universities in England

The authors review three aspects of economic education in England. They examine trends in undergraduate economics in England, principally in terms of recruitment and outcomes and connections with economics in schools. They also review formal instruction in schools through so-called “advanced level” courses for 16–19-year-old students and the role of the academic community in recent research in England on economic education.     

Classroom Games: The Allocation of Renewable Resources Under Different Property Rights and Regulation Schemes

The authors describe a renewable resource allocation game designed to stimulate students' interest in and understanding of market failure associated with open-access types of resource use. They also use the game to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various property rights and regulation schemes. Because this exercise demonstrates the power of unregulated and regulated economic incentives, many types of students may benefit from this game, including undergraduates enrolled in the standard introductory and in more advanced microeconomics classes, as well as courses in environmental economics and natural resource economics. This game was specifically designed so that noneconomics majors in natural resource management and environmental courses could also benefit.     

Learning to Argue with Intermediate Macro Theory: A Semester-Long Team Writing Project

The authors describe their experience with integrating a semester-long economic analysis project into an intermediate macroeconomic theory course. Students work in teams of “economic advisors” to write a series of nested reports that analyze the current state of the economy, and propose and evaluate policies for a decision-maker. The project simulates real-world policy consulting with an emphasis on applying economic theory and models. The authors describe the project setup and how to tailor its theme to current events, explain methods for keeping it manageable in larger classes, discuss student learning outcomes, and document course evaluation results. Besides improving the learning experience, this project prepares economics students to contribute their own views to policy debates and buttress them with tight macroeconomic reasoning.     

Economic Education in Korea: Current Status and Changes

The authors describe key aspects of precollege and undergraduate economic education in Korea. They show that precollege students seem to have low economics literacy due to problems with the curriculum and insufficient training of teachers. At the undergraduate level, they show that economics departments have more male students than female students and that the employment rate for economics majors is lower than for business majors. They hope to draw more of Korean economists' attention to research initiatives in economic education.     

Using Art (Paintings,Drawings, and Engravings) to Teach Economics

The authors provide a brief review of how economists have dealt with art in their research and more popular writings, and then consider the case that has been made for using art and other visual materials in general education and—in very few cases—to teach economics. A new Web site on Art and Economics is introduced that makes it easier for economics instructors to find and use art with their students. They discuss several different ways of using the art in classes, and provide a table with over 50 paintings from the Introduction slide show at the Web site to illustrate the range of economic concepts and issues that can be taught with art.     

Journal Articles of Interest from Other Disciplines

The authors describe the present state of economic education in Japan. There is a larger number of undergraduate students who major in economics, but their purpose of studying economics and their economic literacy differ. Precollege economic education is regulated by the course of study and limited by the poor ability of teachers to teach the economics content.     

The effects of a financial literacy intervention on the financial and economic knowledge of high school students

The authors taught financial concepts to students in 12th-grade economics classes, where one treatment was intensive in money management (MM) topics and the other was intensive in financial investment (FI) topics. Two control groups, consisting of 11th-grade students with no exposure to economics and 12th-grade economics students, received no treatment. Both treatment groups showed a 13 percentage point increase in test scores from pretest to posttest, while neither control group showed gains. Neither treatment group outperformed the other in the financial literacy test.     

An Approach to Testing the Effectiveness of the Teaching and Learning of Economics in High School

Based on data on students in a college economics principles course over a nine-year period, the authors conclude that high school economics does improve performance in the principles course but does not influence grades in intermediate theory classes.     

Take My Course,Please: The Effects of the Principles Experience on Student Curriculum Choice

Using a large multi-school sample, the authors examined how the characteristics and attitudes of students interact with the pedagogy and attributes of the instructor to influence students' decisions to study economics beyond the first semester. They found that students who have a predisposition to major in economics, who find economics relevant, who believe they understand economics as well as their classmates, and who expect higher grades in economics relative to their other classes are more likely to continue. They found evidence that teaching techniques and evaluation methods influence all of these factors except for the predisposition to major in economics. Some, but not all, of these techniques are particularly successful in influencing the decisions of female students.     

An endogenous equilibrium game on traffic congestion externalities

Traffic congestion and road tolls are familiar economic concepts for most undergraduates; however, students often have difficulty explaining exactly how theoretical principles like externalities and social welfare are related to their real-world experiences, such as driving. The authors present a classroom exercise to demonstrate how congestion externalities are generated, the effects on private and social welfare, and how appropriately priced tolls can address congestion externalities. Students are asked to evaluate outcomes in five different driving scenarios, with and without congestion or tolls. The authors offer discussion questions to make the activity engaging and informative. They report the results of their efforts to administer the exercise. This 75-minute exercise is appropriate for introductory or intermediate microeconomics, political economy, or environmental economics classes of various sizes.     

Teaching College Economics in the High Schools: The Role of Concurrent Enrollment Programs

The authors examine concurrent enrollment programs (CEP) as an effective means of teaching college economics in high school. They describe the establishment of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships to set national standards for CEP. They also investigate the performance of high school students taking the Syracuse University one-semester micro/macro principles of economics course through its CEP, Project Advance, on the Test of Economic Literacy. CEP students average nearly 1 percentage point higher than do the advanced placement/honors economics group and score considerably better in fundamentals and international economics. By cognitive levels, CEP students score over 4 percentage points in the knowledge area and exhibit better performance on application questions.     

Testing Economic Knowledge

The author of this article describes his experiences in teaching huge classes of principles of economics over the last half-century. He lays out changes in pedagogy and illustrates various novel devices used to explain economic ideas and hold students’ attention. Additionally, he considers the appropriate sizes of intro classes and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of alternative methods of staffing them.     

Teaching Economics in the Schools: A Review of Survey Findings

The authors review and contrast the findings of a 1981 national survey of economic education at the precollege level and 15 state surveys conducted at about the same time. The picture that emerges is disturbing: instruction in economics tends to be minimal (or nonexistent) for many students, and teacher training in economics is limited. Curriculum structure, teacher training, and the development and use of materials are interrelated problems facing economic education.     

The unequal distribution of economic education: A report on the race,ethnicity, and gender of economics majors at U.S. colleges and universities

Economic education is distributed unequally. Among U.S. undergraduates, women and underrepresented minority students collectively major in economics at 0.36 the rate that white, non-Hispanic men do. The authors establish a definition of full inclusion in economic education and use that definition to evaluate the status quo and to compare institutions. A companion resource, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, provides interactive access to the data to attract and inform the attention of economists, university administrators, and others. The authors explain why the need to improve the distribution of economic education is urgent, including the imperative to support economic policymaking. Lastly, they point the way forward, identifying currently available resources and reasonable next steps for all involved parties to take.     

Have economic educators embraced social media as a teaching tool?

In this article, the authors discuss the results of a study of the perceptions of a national sample of economics faculty members from various institutions regarding the use of social media as a teaching tool in and out of the economics classroom. In the past few years, social media has become globally popular, and its use is ubiquitous among students. As such, some instructors have incorporated social media into their courses to engage students. Others are reluctant to embrace social media, citing privacy concerns, social media being more of a distraction than a useful tool, and the challenge of keeping up with social media developments, among others. The authors characterize economics faculty's perceptions of the use of social media platforms for economic instruction.     

The Relative Effectiveness of Economics Instruction for Teachers and College Students

Walstad reports on a master of instruction program for teachers of pre-college students. Comparisons between different groups of students (i.e., teachers in the program, regular intermediate theory students, …) indicate that the program appeared to meet its cognitive and attitudinal objectives. The study, however, raises serious questions about the effectiveness of instruction at the intermediate level and about the economic understanding of pre-college economics teachers (less than or equal to the college principles students included in the study).     

Pod learning: Student groups create podcasts to achieve economics learning goals

In this article, the authors examine two ways that they use music (i.e., popular song lyrics) as an active learning technique in an undergraduate history of economic thought course. First, they use music to help students grasp the ideas of the great thinkers in economics and see their relevance today. Second, because they require students to read original texts and write thesis-driven essays, they use music to teach essential skills related to such assignments. While the article focuses on how they use music as a pedagogical device to teach the history of economic thought, the use of music to teach essential skills could be applied to any economics course in which students engage in higher-level reading and writing.     

Behavioral Objectives and Student Learning Contracts in the Teaching of Economics

The authors present a series of writing assignments that teaches students how to evaluate and critique the written economic work of others. The foundation text is McCloskey's (2000) Economical Writing. The students' dialogues with McCloskey, with each other, and with the authors of the pieces they evaluate sharpen their understanding of, and ability to use, language as an instrument of economic thought. Interviews with former students identify specific benefits from the student perspective of this approach. The authors show how the assignment series can be modified in several ways and how the general approach, as well as the foundation text, can be used in different economics courses.