How Different is Heterodox Economists’ Thinking on Teaching? A Contrastive Evaluation of Interview Data

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how differently heterodox and mainstream economists think about teaching. It draws on data from interviews with sixteen leading heterodox economists, which we analyse according to the principles of thematic analysis. We find considerable variety in heterodoxy. Further, we find evidence that suggests at least some heterodox economists share some elements with mainstream counterparts: on pedagogical practice, the role of their teachers, and scant explicit knowledge of educational philosophy. However, we discover different heterodox educational goals when compared to mainstream peers, mainly clustered around a concern for more radical open-mindedness and free-thinking. Also, some of our respondents showed a commitment to pluralism and critical approach to reality in teaching. Our interviews suggest that heterodox pedagogy is a reaction against and struggle within a uniquely hierarchical and monist discipline, pointing to the sociology and ideology of the economics profession as a shaping factor. We conclude that these characteristics make heterodox pedagogy better suited to foster understanding of complex real-world economic crises associated with global warming, pandemics, and financial meltdown.

KEYWORDS:

• Heterodox economics
• interviews
• teaching economics
• educational philosophy
• pluralism

JEL CODES:

• A1
• B50

Acknowledgements

This paper has benefitted from comments from Sheila Dow, Ingrid Kvangraven, Robert McMaster, Jamie Morgan, Esther Pickering, the editor and two anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See the appendix for a list of names. We present the interviews in full in Mearman, Berger, and Guizzo (2019a). Hence, the responses are not anonymised.

2 Hereon, we refer to interviewees simply by name. A list of interviews is in the appendix. Fuller citations are used for exact quotations.

3 As the interviewees are named, readers can judge whether we achieved our desired diversity. That task is complicated by the fact that interviewees often combined perspectives: for instance, we chose Martinez-Alier as an established ecological economist, yet in his interview he declared some affinity with Marxism.

4 These might include heterodox books and textbooks, such as Lavoie (2014), Rochon and Rossi (2016), Lee (2017), Reardon, Madi, and Cato (2017), Rethinking Economics’ Fischer et al. (2017), Harvey (2015), or online resources such as those curated within TRUE (Teaching Resources for Undergraduate Economics) under the aegis of the Economics Network, available at https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/heterodox [Accessed 30 January 2020, 19:27].

5 For example: the World Economic Association (WEA), the heterodox economics newsletter (HEN), Rethinking and Reteaching Economics.