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

近年来，经济学家成功地开发了用于本科生教学的模拟实验。这些都是从最初为研究而设计的实验中产生的。例如，一个带有交易坑的市场可以用来引入供需和市场效率的概念。这种方法是为积极和参与性的教学目的而开发的，这极大地促进了学生对基础本科经济学的兴趣和理解。它帮助学生克服了对经济理论的抽象和技术性的失望。在这个项目中，我们将这些教材扩展为一组三个实验，这些实验明确设计用于准备在中学教育中教授经济学的学生。我们的方法是在工作坊中使用学生成为高中教师后将使用的相同材料，并鼓励将这些材料作为学生教学的基础。这些研讨会也适用于社区大学教授基础经济学的教师。为这个项目创建的材料涵盖了8 - 12年级国家和州经济学学习标准中提到的特定主题。这个项目也在研究这些材料在研讨会上的相对有效性，并在学生教学中使用，作为加强本科生对基础经济学理解的一种方式。我们正在研究可能从参与这些职前教学活动中受益的经济学背景学生的范围。

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.