Recognising and building on freshman students’ prior knowledge of economics

Abstract

Could traditional economics principles courses be underserving students by failing to recognise their extant economics knowledge? In this paper, we describe an evidence-based approach that challenges the dominant paradigm in teaching first-year economics. We first show that incoming undergraduate students have higher than expected levels of economic literacy. We then describe extensions we have made to the breadth and depth of content coverage in our introductory economics course. Finally, we show using international comparisons that these changes were made without a substantial loss of learning of core economics topics, and without disadvantaging students who have no prior high school economics training.

Keywords:

• freshman economics
• economic literacy
• prior learning

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the editor of NZEP and two anonymous referees for their very helpful and valuable suggestions. We also thank Paul Dalziel, Michael Watts, William Walstad and other participants at the International Conference on Economics Education, Waseda University, Tokyo, August 2009, for their very insightful comments. We also acknowledge the insightful comments made by Anna Strutt, Peter Kennedy, and participants at the 15th Australasian Teaching Economics Conference in Hamilton, New Zealand, June 2010.

Note

Notes

1. Students who had prior economics training, but not at high school, included students who had previous polytechnic or university study in economics, including some students who were repeating the introductory economics paper.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the encouragement and financial support provided by Professor Michio Yamaoka.