Meeting Summary: In economics, arguably the best measure of what Thomas Kuhn calls a paradigm is the content of second-year textbooks in micro and macroeconomic theory. We find that especially in the field of microeconomics, over the last half-century, a substantial hiatus has emerged between the research corpus and the reigning paradigm taught to economics majors (Bowles, Carlin, Halliday and Subramanyam 2019). Economics pedagogy has also experienced a growing gap, in this case between the opportunities for engaging students with highly interactive individual learner-centered methods.
This working group will collaborate in the production of a new course and an interactive learning system for second-year students in economics. A second objective of the group will be to devise methods for assessing the effects of the new pedagogy and new content on recruitment to the study of economics of underrepresented people (especially women and some ethnic groups) as well as on students’ learning, social values, motivation to continue the study of economics, and career objectives. This aspect of our work will build on our recent paper (Girardi, Mamunuru, Halliday and Bowles 2019).
Participants:
Nicolas Bohme, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Samuel Bowles, Universitá degli Studi di Siena
Harriet Brookes-Gray, Smith College
Scott Cohn, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Bridget Diana, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Simon Halliday, Smith College
Sai Madhurika Mamunuru, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Chris Makler, Stanford University