Stephen slavin macroeconomics

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2018

A great many students at a major research university make basic conceptual mistakes in responding to simple questions about two successive percentage changes. The mistakes they make follow a pattern already familiar from research on the difficulties that elementary school students have in coming to terms with fractions and decimals. The intuitive core knowledge of arithmetic with the natural numbers makes learning to count and do simple arithmetic relatively easy. Those same principles become obstacles to understanding how to operate with rational numbers. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The origins of numerical abilities'.

Journal of Economic Literature, 2020

We make the case for a shift in what students learn in a first economics course, taking as our exemplar Paul Samuelson’s paradigm-setting 1948 text. In the shadow of the Great Depression, Samuelson made Keynesian economics an essential component of what every economics student should know. By contrast, leading textbooks today were written in the glow of the Great Moderation and the tamed cyclical fluctuations in the two decades prior to 2007. Here, using topic modeling, we document Samuelson’s novelty and the evolution of the content of introductory textbooks since, and we put forward three propositions. First, as was the case in the aftermath of the Great Depression, new problems now challenge the content of our introductory courses; these include mounting inequalities, climate change, concerns about the future of work, and financial instability. Second, the tools required to address these problems, including strategic interaction, limited information, principal–agent models, new b...

This resource book is intended for a one-semester model course for high school economics for eleventh- and twelfth-grade students. The seven units in the book are linked to content ordinarily found in microeconomic and macroeconomic courses. Each unit contains 5 to 11 lessons, an author's note to the teacher, an author's letter to the students, classroom instructional materials, and sample test items. Each self-contained lesson contains a summary of economic content, an economic reasoning summary, instructional objectives, procedures, and student materials. The seven units in the resource book are: (1) "Why Economics Is Important"; (2) "Supply and Demand"; (3) "Consumers and Producers"; (4) "The Role of Government in Economics"; (5) "Macroeconomics"; (6) "Macroeconomics: Forecasting Our Economic Future"; and (7) "International Economics Issues." The book concludes with a section on extending teaching activ...

2010

Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, 2014

This study reports on the use of formative, diagnostic online assessments for the topic percentages. Two new item formats (drag-drop and slider) are described. About one-third of the school students (Years 7 to 9) could, using a slider, estimate “80% more than” a given length, in contrast with over two-thirds who could estimate “90% of” a given length. While four-fifths of the school students could, using drag-drop cards, choose the 2-step calculation of a reduced price after a 35% discount, only one-third could choose the corresponding 1step calculation.

Eastern Economic Journal

Students often become frustrated with learning economics not because the economics is too hard, but because they try to grasp the economic device, model, or tool being used at the same time they try to understand the economic theory the device is designed to illuminate. As a result, the tool that should aid economic understanding frequently backfires. This paper links three pertinent concepts from the education literature – prior knowledge, scaffolding, and modelling – to teaching economics. After explaining each concept, we supply three strategies designed to leverage each concept for maximum impact. Our examples come from across the curriculum: intermediate macroeconomics, principles of microeconomics and econometrics. We hope that readers will use our ideas and consider further ways of leveraging each concept. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Claar, V.V. and Finn, J.E. (2011) 'Using prior knowledge, scaffolding, and modelling to teach lessons in economics: three examples from across the curriculum', Int.

Instructional Science, 2003

During three discussion sessions, two groups of five teachers each developed a shared lesson plan, one for each group, for the teaching of a difficult economic concept, the incidence of a sales tax. In one of the groups (the lesson study group), the lesson plan was based on the pool of the participants' experience and intuition in accordance with the Japanese "lesson study". In the other group (the learning study group), the lesson plan was based on the participants' experience and intuition as made sense of in terms of a learning theory introduced by a researcher in accordance with the idea of "the learning study", in which the Japanese lesson study is combined with a "design experiment". The students' understanding was probed after the series of lessons. In the classes of the lesson study group, fewer than 30% of the students developed a good grasp of the concept, compared to over 70% of the students in the learning study group. The differences in learning outcomes are interpreted in the light of observed differences in how the concept was dealt with in the different classrooms.

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2000

The desire to reverse a downward trend in the number of undergraduates majoring in economics is an impetus to advance the scholarship of teaching economics as we enter the 21st century. This article offers suggestions for changing the concepts taught and the applications used in college and university economics courses within the United States. It provides practical methods to improve the way economics is taught. The assessment of students and the evaluation of pedagogical practices are also addressed.