Collaborative Proposal: 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模拟实验，用于本科生的教学。这些是从最初为研究而设计的实验中创造出来的。例如，一个有交易坑的市场可以用来引入供需和市场效率的概念。这种方法是为教学目的而开发的，具有积极和参与性，极大地提高了学生的兴趣和对基础本科水平经济学的理解。它帮助克服了学生对经济理论抽象和技术性的失望。在这个项目中，我们将这些教材扩展到一组三个实验，这些实验明确地设计用于准备在中学教育中教授经济学的学生。我们的方法是在研讨会上使用学生在高中成为教师后将使用的相同材料，并鼓励学生使用这些材料作为学生教学的基础。社区大学教授基础经济学的教师也可以参加这些研讨会。为这个项目编写的材料涵盖了8-12年级国家和国家经济学学习标准中提到的特定主题。该项目还在研究这些材料在研讨会上介绍并用于学生教学的相对有效性，以此作为加强本科生对经济学基础理解的一种方式。我们正在研究可能从参加这些职前教学活动中受益的经济学学生的背景范围。

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.