Educating citizens for changing economies

Abstract

While economic factors play a crucial role in determining election outcomes, the place of economic understanding in educating citizens is neither widely recognized nor substantially articulated in the literature. Although economic educators have frequently asserted that economic understanding is important to citizens’ education, they have not set out their case by engaging with the wider literature on citizenship education. This paper identifies two dimensions of an economic education that enable it to contribute to a ‘maximalist’ citizenship education.

Keywords:

• citizenship education
• economic understanding
• economy
• relevance (education)
• secondary school curriculum

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Mike Watts and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Davies

His research publications are in the fields of education policy, curriculum development, and formative assessment. He is joint editor of the International Review of Economics Education.