Collaborative Research: Economics Experiments to Prepare Secondary Teachers and Reinforce Understanding of Basic Economics

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In recent years economists have successfully developed simulated experiments for use in teaching undergraduate students. These have been created from experiments that were initially devised for research. For example, a market with a trading pit can be used to introduce the concepts of supply and demand, and market efficiency. This approach has been developed for teaching purposes as active and participatory, which has strongly benefited student interest and understanding of basic undergraduate-level economics. It has helped to overcome student frustration with the abstract and technical character of economic theory. In this project, we extend these teaching materials to a set of three experiments that are explicitly designed to be used by students preparing to teach economics in secondary education. Our approach is to use the same materials in workshops that the students will use once they become teachers in high schools, and to encourage the use these materials as a basis for student teaching. These workshops are also available to faculty teaching basic economics in community colleges. The materials being created for this project cover specific topics mentioned in National and State Standards of Learning for Economics for grades 8 - 12. This project is also conducting research on the relative effectiveness of these materials introduced in workshops and used in student teaching as a way of reinforcing undergraduate students understanding of basic economics. We are examining the range of student backgrounds in economics that are likely to benefit from participation in these pre-service teaching activities.