Teaching Economics in Troubled Times
Mark Schug and William C. Wood’s new book is Teaching Economics in Troubled Times. This site supports the book. Schug and Wood edited a special issue of Social Education on new developments in economics teaching that came to the attention of editors at the British publisher Routledge. Routledge suggested a book-length treatment edited by Schug and Wood, with contributors chosen from the ranks of up-and-coming and distinguished economic educators. The result is Teaching Economics in Troubled Times: Theory and Practice for Secondary Social Studies.
Table of Contents
Introduction, by Mark C. Schug and
William C. Wood
Part I: The Changing Economic Scene
1. What Every High School Student and Teacher Needs to Know about Economics, by James Gwartney and Mark C. Schug
2. Maynard Keynes: Dead But Not Forgotten, by Scott Niederjohn
3. Free Trade: Helping Ourselves While Helping Others, by
Dwight R. Lee
4. Public Choice and Behavioral Economics: Implications for Instructors, by Angela M. Smith and William C. Wood
5. Morality of Markets: Classroom and Conscience, by J.R. Clark and Mark Schug
Part II: Making Economics Cool in School
6. A Challenging Assignment in Troubled Times: What Every First Year High School Economics Teacher Needs to Know, by Jane S. Lopus
7. A Jewel for Your School’s Curriculum in Uncertain Economic Times: The Advanced Placement Economics Course, by John Morton
8. Vital Knowledge in Troubled Times: The Role of Personal Finance in Economic Education, by Michael S. Gutter and Selena Garrison
9. Entrepreneurship Education, When and Where it Counts: The American Dream Youthpreneurship Program, by Barbara Flowers
10. Economics in History: What Every High School Student and Teacher Needs to Know, by Lucien Ellington
Part III: Research Finding in Economic Education
11. Best Economic Education Practices for Children, by Philip VanFossen
12. What Research Tells Us about Teaching High School Economics, by Michael Watts and William B. Walstad
A One-Stop Collection
In the Great Recession of 2007-2010, Americans watched their retirement savings erode and the value of their homes decline while the unemployment rate increased and GDP sank. New demands emerged for unprecedented government intervention into the economy. While these changes have a dramatic impact on society at large, they also have serious implications for the content and teaching of economics.
Teaching Economics in Troubled Times is a one-stop collection that helps pre- and in-service social studies teachers to foster an understanding of classic content as well as recent economic developments. Part I offers clear and teachable overviews of the nature of today’s complex economic crisis and the corollary changes in teaching economics that flow from revising and updating long-held economic assumptions. Part II provides both detailed best practices for teaching economics in the social studies classroom and frameworks for teaching economics within different contexts including personal finance, entrepreneurship, and history. Part III concludes with effective strategies for teaching at the elementary and secondary school levels based on current research on economic education. From advice on what every economics teacher should know, to tips for best education practices, to investigations into what research tells us about teaching economics, this collection provides a wealth of contextual background and teaching ideas for today’s economics and social studies educators.
“Teaching Economics in Troubled Times provides easy access to classic economics content and debates in light of the Great Recession. Readers will gravitate towards the practical strategies for teaching economics as a stand alone subject or through history courses. It is an invaluable resource for both pre-and in-service teachers of economics.”
–Anand R. Marri, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Social Studies and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Keynes vs. Hayek in Rap Videos
John Maynard Keynes is dead but not forgotten, Lakeland College’s Scott Niederjohn reminds readers in his chapter of Teaching Economics in Troubled Times. A young Keynes appears in this rap video with ideological nemesis F.A. Hayek. Recommended!
And here’s round two:
Teachers Can Be Millionaires, Too
Mark Schug and William Wood wrote a well-received article in Social Education titled, “Teachers Can Be Millionaires, Too.” Schug and Wood hope to elaborate the theme in a future work.
Accolades for the Editors
The editors of Teaching Economics in Troubled Times have both been honored in the Great Teachers Series of the Gus A. Stavros Center at Florida State University. See the entire list of winners here. You may also be interested in the text of interviews with Mark Schug and William Wood.
About the Contributors
Contributors to Teaching Economics in Troubled Times, listed alphabetically:
J.R. Clark earned the Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute under the Nobel Laureate James Buchanan. He holds the Probasco Chair at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and is the author of six books and numerous academic articles published in the United States, Austria, Japan, Italy, Canada, France, India and Russia. Prior to coming to UTC, Professor Clark was with the Joint Council on Economic Education in New York, chaired a large University economics department in New Jersey, held the Hendrix Chair at UT Martin, and was a research fellow at Princeton University. In 1996, he was inducted into the Mont Pelerin Society and elected to its board of directors in 2006. Currently, he serves as Secretary/Treasurer for the Association of Private Enterprise Education and the Southern Economic Association, as well as a board member of Kenco Corp.
Lucien Ellington is UC Foundation Professor of Education and Co-director of the Asia Program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Professor Ellington is also a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is the founding and current editor of the Association for Asian Studies teaching journal, Education About Asia. His publications include books, journal articles, and book chapters on Japan, economic education, economic and world history, and educational reform. Professor Ellington has also served as editor for two book series on Asia.
Barbara Flowers recently joined the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis as a senior economic education specialist. Prior to joining the Fed, she served as director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis where she taught economics and developed curriculum in economics and personal finance. While at the center, she also developed the American Dream Youthpreneurship Program for high school students. She is the co-author of Financial Fitness for Life, Grades 6-8; Economics at Work, and elementary curriculum units, Focus on Economics: K-2 and 3-5, among others.
Selena Garrison is State Training Coordinator and Head Trainer of the Florida Master Money Mentor Program through the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, in the Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida. She holds Bachelor of Science degrees in both Psychology and Family, Youth and Community and Sciences from the University of Florida. She also holds a Master of Science in Family, Youth and Community Sciences from the University of Florida with a specialization in Family Financial Management. Her research interests focus on the impacts of financial socialization in relation to financial knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Her Master’s thesis focused on gender differences in financial socialization and willingness to take financial risks.
Michael Gutter is an Assistant Professor and Financial Management State Specialist for the Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences, in the Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida. His Ph.D. is in Family Resource Management from The Ohio State University with a specialization in Finance. The common theme that connects Gutter’s Research, Teaching and Outreach is helping households achieve financial security. His outreach projects include Managing in Tough Times, Florida Saves, Florida Master Money Mentor, and Get Checking. Professor Gutter is the current Vice President of the Florida Jumpstart Coalition and serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Consumer Affairs, Journal of Consumer Education, and the Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning. His research and outreach has funding from Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation, Bank of America, National Endowment for Financial Education, and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation.
James D. Gwartney holds the Gus A. Stavros Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida State University, where he directs the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. He is the coauthor of Economics: Private and Public Choice, (Cengage South-Western Press, 2010), a widely used principles of economics text that is now in its 13th edition. He is also the co-author of the annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, which provides information on the consistency of institutions and policies with economic freedom for 141 countries. His publications have appeared in scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Southern Economic Journal, Kyklos , and Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. During 1999-2000, he served as Chief Economist of the Joint Economic Committee of the U. S. Congress. He is a past President of the Southern Economic Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. His Ph.D. in economics is from the University of Washington.
Jane S. Lopus is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Education at California State University, East Bay. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Davis and an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor Lopus teaches a wide variety of economics courses at Cal State East Bay and was named the University’s Outstanding Professor in 2006. She is an active researcher in economic education and has won both research and leadership awards from the National Association of Economic Educators. As a former high school economics teacher, she has written many materials for teaching economics at the high school level. She is actively involved in the international programs of the Council on Economic Education.
Dwight R. Lee received his Ph.D from the University of California, San Diego in 1972. Since that time he has had full time tenured faculty appointments at the University of Colorado, Virginia Tech University, George Mason University, and the University of Georgia where he was the Ramsey Professor of Economics and Private Enterprise from 1985-2008. He is currently the William J. O’Neil Professor of Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Professor Lee’s research has covered a variety of areas including the Economics of the Environment and Natural Resources, the Economics of Political Decision Making, Public Finance, Law and Economics, and Labor Economics. He was president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education for 1994-95 and president of the Southern Economic Association from 1997-98. John S. Morton is the senior program officer for the Arizona Council on Economic Education. Previously, he was an economics teacher at Homewood-Flossmoor High School (Illinois), founder and director of the Governors State University Center for Economic Education (Illinois), founder and president of the Arizona Council on Economic Education, and vice president for program development at the National Council on Economic Education. He chaired the advisory board of The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition and has written 40 publications and books of instructional activities for the high school economics course, including four widely used textbooks.
Mark C. Schug is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Professor Schug taught for 36 years at the middle school, high school, and university levels. He currently is a fulltime consultant on economic and financial education and education policy. A widely recognized scholar, he has written and edited over 200 articles, books, and national curriculum materials. He served for three years as Senior Fellow with the National Council on Economic Education. He serves on the boards of the Association of Private Enterprise, Business and Economics Academy of Milwaukee, Economics Wisconsin, University School of Milwaukee, the Governor’s Council on Financial Literacy and School Choice Wisconsin.
Angela M. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Economics at James Madison University. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia with concentrations in public economics and industrial organization and a B.A. in economics from the College of William and Mary. Her primary research field is experimental economics and she has written multiple refereed articles in this area that examine various phenomena including exclusive contracts, security investments, individual probability updating, and firm product ordering behavior. She also uses experiments in the classroom to guide students to realize and understand economic concepts through experience.
Phillip J. VanFossen is the James F. Ackerman Professor of Social Studies Education, Director of the Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship and Associate Director of the Purdue University Center for Economic Education at Purdue University. Professor holds a courtesy appointment in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue where he teaches introductory economics courses. He is the program author for a recently released high school economics textbook Econ Alive!: The Power to Choose (Teacher’s Curriculum Institute, 2009). In addition to economic education, his research interests include the use of digital technology in social studies classrooms. He has authored 3 books, numerous chapters and more than 25 refereed articles on these topics.
William Walstad is John T. and Mable M. Hay Professor of Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Editor of the Journal of Economic Education. He is an expert on testing and assessment in economics. He served on the test committee for the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in economics and now serves on the test committee for 2012 administration of NAEP economics. He helped construct the National Financial Capability Challenge test for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He has directed projects to prepare many pre-college tests, including the Test of Economic Literacy (high school), Test of Economic Knowledge (middle school), Basic Economics Test (elementary) and three Financial Fitness for Life tests (elementary, middle, and high school).
Michael Watts is a Professor of Economics and the director of the Center for Economic Education at Purdue University. He has served as president of the National Association of Economic Educators and the Society of Economics Educators, as Vice President of the Midwest Economic Association, and as a member and Chair of the American Economic Association’s Committee on Economic Education. His main teaching interests include microeconomics, labor economics, and the history of economic thought. His major publications include The Literary Book of Economics; “Teachers’ Undergraduate Coursework in Economics in the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study” (with W. Bosshardt) and “Instructor Effects and Their Determinants in Pre-College Economic Education” (with W. Bosshardt). He was a member of the writing team for the first edition of the voluntary national standards in economics. He has served as a consultant for such organizations as the Council on Economic Education, Agency for Instructional Technology, The College Board, the IMF, the U.S. Information Agency, and Microsoft.
William C. Wood is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Education at James Madison University. An accomplished teacher and writer, Wood was the recipient of teaching awards at the University of Virginia and at James Madison University, where he was the 2001-2002 Distinguished Teacher in the College of Business. Wood was named in 2002 as an inaugural winner of the Southern Economic Association’s Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Award. Wood is also a past recipient of the Alpha Kappa Psi-Clifford D. Spangler award for research in risk and insurance and Best Paper award for the Journal of Private Enterprise. He is the author of three books, more than 30 scholarly articles, and national economic education materials for school and adult audiences.
About the Editors
Mark C. Schug is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Schug taught for over 36 years at the middle school, high school, and university levels. He served as Senior Fellow with the National Council on Economic Education from 2002-2005. He works as a national consultant on economic and financial education and urban education policy. Professor Schug often speaks and writes about economic and financial education, market-based reforms in education, and issues in urban school districts. He serves on the boards of the (national) Association of Private Enterprise, Business and Economics Academy of Milwaukee, Economics Wisconsin, University School of Milwaukee and the Governor’s Council on Financial Literacy.
William C. Wood is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Education at James Madison University. Wood was the recipient of teaching awards at the University of Virginia and at James Madison University, where he was the 2001-2002 Distinguished Teacher in the College of Business. Wood was named in 2002 as an inaugural winner of the Southern Economic Association’s Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Award. Wood is also a past recipient of the Alpha Kappa Psi-Clifford D. Spangler award for research in risk and insurance and Best Paper award for the Journal of Private Enterprise. He is the author of three books, more than 30 scholarly articles, and national economic education materials for school and adult audiences.
Schug, Wood and Niederjohn Go Electronic
Three contributors to this project served as the primary content team for a new computer game that teaches personal finance. Mark Schug, William Wood and Scott Niederjohhn worked with the Council for Economic Education on this game. The game’s setting is that of a secret agent making assignments to students, who assemble teams of operatives and go on missions. The game, called “Gen i Revolution,” is available free for classroom use. Find out more at http://genirevolution.org.