Potential Pitfalls in Economics Education: Pedagogical Opportunities
Potenziali insidie dell’educazione economica:
Opportunità pedagogiche
Emanuel Mizzi
University of
Malta, Malta – emanuel.mizzi@um.edu.mt
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3237-9150
Economics is often accused of
being complicit with much of what has gone wrong with economic life in the last
thirty years, such as failing to predict the global financial crisis of 2007–2008.
This and various other problems that have come to light have led even its
proponents to question the capacity of the discipline to account for real-world events or for assisting in policy
formulation. In this paper, I argue in favour of
an alternative conceptualisation for economics and economics education, and
discuss the resulting insights and implications for teaching and learning that can
enable young people to grasp disciplinary knowledge in economics.
L’economia è spesso accusata
di essere la complice di molti degli errori che hanno segnato la vita economica
negli ultimi trent’anni, come la mancata previsione della crisi finanziaria
globale del 2007–2008. Unitamente a ciò, altri problemi emergenti di varia
natura hanno addirittura condotto i sostenitori di questa tesi a mettere in
dubbio la capacità della disciplina di rendere conto degli eventi del mondo
reale o di contribuire nella formulazione delle politiche. In questo articolo, argomento
in favore di una concettualizzazione alternativa dell’economia e dell’educazione
economica e discuto le intuizioni che ne derivano e cosa ciò implichi per l’insegnamento
e l’apprendimento – auspicando che ciò aiuti i giovani a meglo comprendere la
disciplina economica.
KEYWORDS
Economics education, Critical
realism, Pedagogy, Pedagogical approaches in economics education
Educazione economica,
Realismo critico, Pedagogia, Approcci pedagogici all’educazione economica
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The Author declares no
conflicts of interest
RECEIVED
March 23, 2024
ACCEPTED
April 23, 2024
What is economics? Marshall (1920) defines economics as “a study of
mankind in the ordinary business of life”, exploring “that part of individual
and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with
the use of the material requisites of well-being” (p. 1). Subsequently,
Robbins (1984) claims that economics is the scientific exploration of human behaviour
as a relationship between ends and scarce means that can be employed in various
ways. This particular
definition, or its iterations, has become the universally accepted one
and serves as the foundational idea for studying economics around the globe (Brant,
2011, 2015; Mizzi, 2022).
Studying economics is likely to enhance students’ comprehension of the
world, allowing them to make well-informed decisions as customers, citizens and
employees (Grant, 2006; Krueger, 2019; Mizzi, 2021, 2022; Skidelsky, 2020).
Young people possess a strong desire to comprehend the dynamic environment they
inhabit and want to improve it (Brant, 2015; Brant and Cullimore, 2012; Brant
and Panjwani, 2015; Mizzi, 2022). An indication of this phenomenon is the
growing global trend of students choosing to pursue economics as their field of
study (Brant, 2015, 2018; Brant and Cullimore, 2012). The discipline offers
them valuable insights, such as cultivating their ability to think like an
economist. Therefore, it is the duty of a teacher to implement economics education
in a way that makes the topic meaningful, dynamic and valuable for students to
study. Students may then discover that the majority of
economics is common sense (Chang, 2014; Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins, 2016).
There are several approaches
to understanding the economy or engaging in the study of economics. The schools
of economic thought include the classical, neoclassical, Marxist,
developmental, Keynesian, Austrian, Schumpeterian, behaviouralist and institutionalist
schools. These various approaches to economics employ distinct methodology and
beliefs. Each has different advantages and disadvantages, which are determined
by its conceptualisation of different areas of the economy and their
interconnections. While it is not appropriate for any single school to assert
its supremacy over others, the neoclassical school often positions itself as
the prevailing one (Lawson, 1997; Skidelsky, 2020). In this paper, I discuss
the resulting disarray in economics and the alternative conceptualisation for the
discipline as a social science, and analyse the implications for teaching and
learning that may enable students to experience deep learning in the
discipline.
The need is felt for
economists to think about and evaluate the inherent
limitations and state of disarray of the discipline (Aldred, 2019; Brant and
Panjwani, 2015; Fine, 2010; Lawson, 1997; Fourcade et al., 2015; Piketty, 2014;
Shanks, 2020; Skidelsky, 2020). For example, Fine (2010) contends that
economics is ‘zombie-like’, being both dead and alive at the same time, and Lawson (1997) maintains that its ‘theoretical models’ are increasingly perceived
as irrelevant to real-world issues.
Economics frequently faces
accusations of complicity in the negative developments that have occurred in
economic affairs during the past three decades (Aldred, 2019; Dow, 2009;
Skidelsky, 2020). This encompasses the inability to anticipate the worldwide
financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2008, although economists
“have confidently declared that none of it is their fault – it is only that
their principles have been improperly applied” (Fine, 2010, p. 153). This and various problems that have come to light have
led even its proponents to question the capacity of economics to account
for real-world events or assist in policy formulation (Chang,
2014; Fourcade et al., 2015; Lawson, 1997; Skidelsky, 2020). Section 2.1 discusses
this situation.
The practices of economics tend to be rooted within a positivist
conception (Caldwell, 1982; Lawson, 1997;
Lipsey, 1989; Piketty, 2014). The ‘disciples’ of neoclassical economics want it to be more like physics than any other social science
is, claiming that economics should be
able to make predictions in an attempt to acquire scientific
respectability (Fourcade et al., 2015; Skidelsky,
2020). Economists are often accused of suffering
from ‘physics envy’ in trying so hard to emulate the natural sciences.
Skidelsky (2020) maintains that “no other social science counts and measures
its material so energetically” (p. xi).
The inclination towards positivism has led
economics to be perceived as less relevant to the world in which we live
(Chang, 2011, 2014; Lawson, 1997). According to
Lawson (1997), the issues in economics are mostly caused by economists relying
too much on a problematic understanding of science without critically
evaluating it. While attempting to establish
theories about the behaviour of persons, economics is likely to perceive them
as machine-like creatures, expecting them to behave with the law-like regularity
of natural phenomena. Nevertheless, it is essential to acknowledge that humans
are inherently creative and inventive beings.
Most economics textbooks distinguish between positive and normative
economics. Normative economics deals with values and ethical judgements, and
concerns with “what ought to be” and is “inextricably bound up with our
philosophical, cultural and religious positions” (Lipsey, 1989, p. 16).
Positive economics is proposed by neoclassical economists as being value-free
and as “an ‘objective’ science, in precisely the same sense as any of the
physical sciences” (Friedman, 1953, p. 4). It is fundamentally detached
from any specific ethical stance or normative judgements.
Positive economics appears to be the received view embraced by the majority of neoclassical economists and dominates at the school and
university levels, making a claim of
science and the scientific method (Brant, 2011; Brant
and Panjwani, 2015; Spotton Visano, 2018, 2019). Friedman (1953) and Blaug (1992), for instance, regard economics as a positive
science composed of a collection of provisional generalisations about economic
phenomena that can be employed to forecast the consequences of changes in
circumstances. Progress in the discipline requires not only the testing and
elaboration of existing hypotheses but also the construction of new ones.
The positivist philosophy of science embraced
by some economists tends to be highly problematic, assuming that the world is fixed, repetitive, unstructured and undifferentiated (Fourcade
et al., 2015; Lawson, 1997; Skidelsky, 2020). By using scientific methods, these
economists may claim to discover universal laws that explain and predict the
world. They are driven to think of the social
world as a potentially perfect machine where human behaviour can be modelled to
fit the requirements of such a conception (Coyle, 2021; Skidelsky, 2020).
It is however questionable
whether logical deduction from tight
assumptions is the best way of perceiving economic reality. The
scenarios economists explore involve an uncontrolled number of variables that are
more complex than those of natural science and also
qualitatively different, making objectivity and predictability very difficult. Because
of an implicit and uncritical reliance upon various results of positivism, economics may end up lacking any explicit argument
pertaining to its epistemological status and a neglect of ontology
on account of a lack of attention to elaborating the nature of social
existence (Lawson, 1997; Skidelsky, 2020).
Students of economics may experience the discipline as dominated by theoretical and mathematical models that allow for a
limited range of possibilities, poorly predict the future, and do not
adequately explain current states of affairs. A heavy reliance upon these models may lead economists to sideline
important issues such as the distribution of wealth (Piketty, 2014). The INET
project, for example, attempts to guide economics education towards addressing
critical challenges confronting society, including climate change, injustice
and innovation (https://www.ineteconomics.org/).
Economists may tend to perceive
the calculations of the consequences of action behind economic models as the
magic keys that unlock the secrets of human behaviour. Wrapped in
a cloak of technical analysis, economics may become
the mathematical and statistical analysis of production and consumption
(Spotton Visano, 2019). The
models employed may fail to predict outcomes
accurately, and may ignore the motives for choice and action that fall outside
the behaviour set up in these models. The underpinning conception may be that of
the ‘economic man’ or ‘homo economicus’ who is assumed to consider the most
efficient means to achieve his/her coherent plans and to respond to
interventions in a predictable way. The foregoing critiques of economics as a
science lead me to argue that this is not the case.
Without much explicit or cogent argument, economists may
not give due importance to the study of methodology. They may tend to emphasise ‘what to think’ instead of ‘how to
think’ (Skidelsky, 2020), and assume that social reality must fit in
whichever method is employed.
Economic models are likely to assume that individuals
behave rationally, even though the results may turn out to be far from what has
been expected. The question may arise: “Has the
argument excluded parts of reality that are important to understanding what
might happen?” It might
be that the conception of infallible and economically rational agents acting in
closed and isolated conditions constitutes a different world that does not
provide insight into our own.
A major cause of methodological inconsistency is the uncritical
adherence to the deductivist mode of reasoning (Lawson,
1997; Skidelsky, 2020). There exists the tendency of constructing a set of
universal laws applicable to all situations and problems. Laws are
formulated in terms of constant conjunctions of events of the form ‘whenever
event x then event y’. Deductivism constitutes an
almost universally applicable mode of economic explanation, in
an attempt to facilitate a predictive economic science (Robbins, 1984).
Since economists may be unable to validate their most important hypotheses
empirically, they may tend to slide into ideology (Piketty, 2014; Skidelsky,
2020). On the contrary, for example, the strength of Piketty’s argument in situating
the issue of distribution back into economics is that his debate over
inequality is grounded in strong empirical data through an analysis of the historic trends of wealth and income of twenty
countries.
Economics needs to cultivate a greater
sensitivity to the social and political context. The discipline needs to be
perceived more as part of an open system with a multiplicity of mechanisms,
structures and agencies at play. Social phenomena are generated in an open
system, which is in stark contrast to viewing the world in terms of closed
systems, with an overuse of the term ‘ceteris paribus’. Unlike particles, human beings are complex and
unpredictable, “entangled within interacting social contexts, relationships and
needs, which may not be unravelled usefully into separate variables” (Alderson,
2021, p. 3).
Economists are likely to treat the economy as the sum
of individual choices. Consequently, they may fail to perceive the nature of
the social world. They may perceive individuals as choosing in isolation,
paying scant attention to the ‘sociology of knowledge’ –
the part played by society in structuring the knowledge on which individual
persons act (Skidelsky, 2020). Economists, for
instance, may not consider the role of power in shaping economic relations, real-world structures, widespread wars,
famines and other miseries, and social decline. The
presumption may be that the methods of economic analysis can be fashioned
without explicit regard to the nature of social phenomena. Consequently, social
reality may be neglected. Economics needs to be more contextualised
socially, historically and politically.
Values such as love, justice,
pity, courage, honour, loyalty, ambition and public service may not be
prioritised in the hypotheses of economists. They may contend that moral questions “are above their pay grade
. . . but this is only because they have defined their
subject in a way that deliberately excludes them” (Skidelsky,
2020, pp. 13-14). Economists may ignore,
for instance, the reality of firms that use their resources to support social
causes or forgo lines of business that might generate negative societal
consequences.
Many tend to equate the
underlying motivation of economic life with greed and the blind pursuit of
money (Molera et al., 2021; Noguera-Méndez & Cifuentes-Faura, 2022). The early
great economists would despise the opinion that economics deals solely with
material wealth and prosperity. Economics, which was once rooted in moral
philosophy, gradually detached itself from moral concerns in the twentieth
century as it aspired to become a pure science. This tendency was part of a
more general movement whereby different traditions of studying society sought
to emulate the natural sciences. The propositions of neoclassical economics
became individualistic and shorn of political
and ethical dimensions. Homo economicus started to be envisaged as
pursuing his/her self-interest and abstaining from social relations.
Economists tended to sideline important questions
such as, “What is the purpose of profit maximisation and efficiency in the
market? Who is benefiting from economic growth? What is the goal of the growth
in wealth?” They assumed, for instance, that the market effectively coordinates
complex economic activities. They tended to forget that it was just a mechanism, a machine. Krueger (2019) argues that one cannot “understand markets or the economy without recognising when
and how the jazz of emotions, psychology, and social relations interfere with
the invisible hands of supply and demand” (p. 6). He mentions the example
of musicians who, out of sheer concern for fairness towards their fans,
sacrifice their profits by underpricing their concert tickets relative to the
price that supply and demand dictate. They might consider it in their own interest
to sacrifice short-term revenue for the sake of long-term longevity.
I argue that economics needs to strengthen its
moral and social dimensions. It needs to consider more the idea of a social human
being who embraces values and cares about other persons, social justice and the
environment. After all, these are the sentiments of the early great economists.
Adam Smith, for instance, claims that human nature is simultaneously
self-regarding and other-regarding. He maintains that
persons are endowed with a natural tendency to care about the well-being of
others, which he calls ‘sympathy’, defining it as “our fellow-feeling for the
misery of others” (Smith, 1776, p. 10). He contends that a society cannot prosper
if it includes a large number of people who are poor
and suffering. Keynes (1931/1963) shares similar concerns. In ‘Economic
possibilities for our grandchildren’, he describes the “love of money as
a possession” as “a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands
over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease” (p. 369). He
argues in favour of the importance of an ethical framework once society ceases
to be focused solely on economic growth.
When the positivist conception of science is uncritically accepted in
economics, the associated specification of homo economicus as the passive
receptor of events may go relatively unchallenged. Economics may not
meaningfully accommodate within its theories the reality of human choice,
perceiving persons as merely passive who do not exercise real choice and
imagination (Chang, 2011, 2014; Lawson, 1997).
The conception that emerges may be one wherein human beings are unable to contribute to the active making of
their own history. The exercise of choice tends to be absent from the models
presented in economics education. Individuals may be represented in such a way
that they almost always follow one rational course of action and are unable to
act in a different way than that predicted by the economic model under
consideration. Economists may ‘forget’ that persons do attempt, and often succeed, to change their living conditions
by imagining a utopia, persuading others and organising society differently.
The repeated explanatory and predictive
failures of economics have led to debates that consider potentially alternative
and fruitful ways that conceptualise the discipline in a broader way than
employing a neoclassical approach underpinned by positivist theory (Brant & Panjwani, 2015; Lawson, 1997; Skidelsky,
2020). While abandoning the attempt to construct a set of
universal laws applicable to all situations and problems, the discipline can instead
be perceived as providing an explanatory function to help young people
understand better important aspects of the world in which they live.
Within an alternative paradigm, the discipline can be perceived as a social science that
emphasises its explanatory function and is
concerned with understanding the values, interests and capacities of
individuals who face the challenge of scarce resources. Economics is
inherently a social subject; the functioning of the economy is of interest to
everyone: how it operates, how well it functions and in whose interests it
functions. It is by following this approach that economics can open up more to other social sciences and potentially
collaborate with them.
Critical realism can provide a better
ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinning to the discipline
of economics than positivism (Brant and Panjwani, 2015; Lawson, 1997; Vincent &
O’Mahoney, 2018). This philosophy assumes that the
world is not immediately apparent and that reality exists independently of
human perceptions (Bhaskar, 2017). Our knowledge of it is always contingent,
subject to development, and based on informed judgement and not on absolute
proof.
The conception embraced by a critical realist
is of a world that is complexly structured, intrinsically dynamic, and
characterised by emergence and novelty (Alderson, 2021; Bhaskar, 1979, 2017;
Lawson, 1997). This ontology is deeper and richer when
compared to that presupposed by the scientific paradigm which tends to inform neoclassical
economics.
A critical realist perceives the world as an open
system, excluding the possibility of constant conjunctions of events; these are
only possible in closed systems. A critical
realist views the world as consisting of more than the actual course of events
and human experiences. Reality is perceived as stratified and three domains of
reality are distinguished (Bhaskar, 1979, 2017). These are the empirical (human sensory experiences and perceptions),
the actual
(events
that occur in space and time, which might be different from what one perceives
to be the case), and the real (structures, powers, mechanisms and tendencies
that generate and explain events). These three domains are ontologically
distinct and irreducible. For
instance, the real cannot be reduced to the actual, nor the latter identified
with the empirical. Their characteristic components (mechanisms, events and
experiences) are unsynchronised or out of phase with one another. To exemplify
the independence of events and experience, one can observe how different
persons following a particular game experience the same event somewhat
differently (for example, a goal or a particular accident), just as when an
individual experiences an already observed event differently when later s/he
views a recording of that same event. Experience is unsynchronised with events,
allowing for the possibility of contrasting experiences of a given event.
Another
important aspect is that critical realism explores the structures, powers,
generative mechanisms and tendencies that contribute to the production of some
identified phenomenon of interest. Structures have the capacities or potential
to act in a certain way, mechanisms are the way structured things operate, and
tendencies are potentials and forces actually
in
operation. These structures and mechanisms exist and act independently of the
patterns of events they govern.
Critical realism recommends following a retroductive approach to understand a particular
phenomenon. This involves proceeding from the
knowledge of the phenomenon existing at any one level of reality, to a
knowledge of mechanisms at a deeper level of reality, which contributed to the
generation of the original phenomenon of interest (Bhaskar, 1979, 2017). In
this way, these mechanisms shed light on the concrete phenomenon observed. The primary
concern is not to produce a repetition or a
confirmation or a falsification of experience, but to understand the causes of
experience or of the events perceived in the world. It
is moving from a level of reality that an individual understands to the level
of what explains them, which at any moment of time is not understood (Bhaskar,
2017).
Bhaskar (1979, 2017) proposes following a ‘DREIC’
model of enquiry when trying to understand a phenomenon. The first
step is ‘Description’, where one describes the
phenomena as accurately as possible. In the ‘Retroductive’ moment, one imagines
a mechanism or structure, which, if it were true, would explain the event or
regularity in question. Since one can
posit a number of explanatory mechanisms or structures, the third task is to ‘Eliminate’
those which are false and consequently ‘Identify’ the ones that
seem to genuinely explain the phenomenon. The final level is where ‘Corrections’
are made and the phenomenon is examined again to see
if the explanatory mechanism has been best identified. When the generative mechanism or structure at work has been identified,
one asks again, “Why does that happen?” This moves the critical realist on to a
new cycle of scientific discovery and development, a repeated DREIC. This
DREIC approach applied to economics can offer the discipline an explanatory
function in contrast to the dubious claims of accurate predictions.
Critical realism can provide for a scenario
where human choice and emancipation are sustained. A positivistic view of
science attempts to control events and
states of affairs. A critical realist perspective can instead offer human emancipation
through structural
transformation, transforming real social structures in order to facilitate alternative opportunities (Alderson,
2021; Bhaskar, 1979, 2017; Lawson, 1997). There arises the possibility of
enhancing the scope for broadening human opportunities. It becomes possible to
reflect about creating structures that are empowering and to replace others that
are restrictive. Choice is no longer denied. On the contrary, it lies within
the realms of policy objectives to aim to widen the scope of choice, in particular with respect to options that are desired.
What are the implications for teaching and learning economics when a
critical realist philosophy is adopted that perceives the discipline as a
social science?
Teachers may be steeped in their own
neoclassical experience of economics. The first step in freeing themselves is
to become aware of its grip and how it is affecting their approach to teaching
economics. It is beneficial that teachers
empower themselves and their students to think critically and remove the “glasses
that neo-liberal ideologies like you to wear every day. The glasses make the
world look simple and pretty” (Chang, 2011, p. xvi). One then
hopes, for instance, that by incorporating into lessons their own experiences,
such as those relating to their choices as consumers, teachers can become
increasingly aware of the grip of neoclassical economics, and students
recognise that neoclassical economics has no right to claim unique expertise.
It is also beneficial that teachers are aware
of and explore the nature of the economics content present in the curriculum
and textbooks. Is it portrayed that there is only one right way of ‘doing economics’, that is the neoclassical approach, as most
economics books assume (Mizzi, 2022)? In the worst scenario, textbooks do not
even discuss that there exist other schools of economics other than the
neoclassical one. Grant (2006), for instance, while suggesting strategies to
promote active learning in economics, does not urge teachers to explore their
own conceptions vis-à-vis the discipline and to explore whether neoclassical
economics is the dominant paradigm being presented in the syllabus they follow.
The alternative conceptualisation towards economics
education implies that teachers educate their students into perceiving economic
models not as entities in themselves but as tools that
assist them to critically explore, understand and explain reality better
(Mizzi, 2023b). Such a pedagogic approach assists the reclamation of reality
from abstract models with discussions and assessments
contextualised with relevant examples from the real world and the students’ own
lives. The role of the teacher is not to approach reality with a priori
theories to explicate the practice taking place but to explore how the
theoretical elements are manifest in reality. Students
start to critically engage with economic models and perceive them as
representing the unseen forces and mechanisms at work. One
example is when teaching the supply and demand model in a manner that assists students to understand the forces of demand
and supply that influence the decisions of firms and consumers.
Starting from real-world evidence can assist students to comprehend
more deeply the forces and tendencies at work in the economy. Krueger (2019),
for example, contends that having done extensive field research, he feels that
he has developed a more representative
picture of how economic forces shape the music industry. Along
these lines, teachers get their students to discuss possible explanations of a
phenomenon and then argue for the ‘best’ explanatory mechanism. This retroductive approach to learning economics helps to develop
students’ understandings of the discipline, enabling them to propose sound
explanations.
This is consistent with Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle of starting off
from what is known and concrete and then proceeding to the abstract. Teachers draw upon their students’ experiences and foster
dialogue, discussions and activities that promote engagement with disciplinary
knowledge in economics. They ask themselves: “What experiences do the
students have that relate to the topic to be discussed?” Learning economics
becomes more interesting and relevant as it is contextualised in the students’
life experiences and in the local, national and international contexts.
The philosophy of critical realism implies that teachers educate their
students to perceive economics as part of an open system, involving a
multiplicity of mechanisms, structures and agencies. Students are thereby empowered
to perceive the discipline as a social science that is embedded in the social
system and not isolated from society. Teachers attempt to incorporate
historical, social and political contexts that facilitate a meaningful
understanding of disciplinary knowledge in economics.
Since the discipline tends to be dominated by
one particular understanding of economics (Mizzi,
2022, 2023b), students may be rarely exposed to other conceptualisations and to
a critique of the dominant paradigm. The matter can be made worse by the ‘imperious
tone’ of mainstream economics which can make persons feel that they are being directed
what to think, rather than encouraged to understand (Aldred, 2009). Students benefit
when they are exposed to a range of approaches, emphasising that there is not
just one right way of ‘doing’ economics (Mizzi,
2022). Once they realise that different schools of economic thought emphasise
different aspects and offer different perspectives, students can gain a fuller
and more balanced understanding of the complex economic reality. This fosters
cross-fertilisation, in that different approaches to economics can benefit from
learning from each other, enriching the understanding of the economic world.
A classroom environment dominated by
neoclassical economics may not promote ‘thinking’ as an independent reflective
process. Students benefit when they are involved in critical thinking in
economics and are encouraged to become aware of the
different types of economic arguments and to develop the critical faculty to evaluate
which argument makes most sense in a given economic circumstance (Chang, 2014;
Mizzi, 2023b). In this way, teachers contribute towards returning
pluralism to economics education by enhancing the students’ appreciation of a
richer set of perspectives on economic relations.
Teachers who commit themselves to a pluralist
approach to economics education can make explicit the methodological
assumptions of the economics they teach. They do this by including in their
economics content an overview of the history of economic thought and encouraging
critical reflection on the conceptualisations involved. Since an economic
theory is specific to its time and space, students are invited to understand
the motivation of those who developed the ideas involved and the context in
which these ideas were conceived and developed.
Pedagogical pluralism in economics education is
also needed. Despite efforts to broaden the pedagogical practices in economics,
university economics education tends to be characterised by the pervasiveness
of passive learning through the vehicle of a lecture-based teaching approach
covering traditional content (Spotton Visano, 2018, 2019). This author warns that encouraging
students to reflect upon a wider range of alternative economic viewpoints but maintaining
a classroom environment where the teacher is the sole authoritarian figure
might undermine the importance of pluralistic content (Spotton
Visano, 2019). Such content pluralism promulgated “by
an authoritative lecturer replicates in the classroom
the very power relations that permitted the neoclassical hegemony in the first
place” (Spotton Visano,
2019, p. 328). It is when pluralist content is coupled with a pluralist
pedagogy that students can be empowered with the knowledge to exercise their
own judgment as future economists who have the confidence to challenge the
dominant disciplinary monism.
By considering different economic approaches,
learning can be enacted around a diversified economics course content by
exploring pedagogical practices that encourage discussions over a more broadly
informed range of perspectives on the economy, with no one school of thought
accorded blanket authority a priori. Students can gradually
mature into critiquing and debating existing theories, gaining insights,
forming their own views, and discovering other approaches that accord better
with their own understandings of how the economy works (Mizzi, 2022, 2023b).
This pedagogical approach can assist in
dislodging the dominance of neoclassical economics and animating pluralist
content. A teacher who adopts such a pedagogy can cultivate a classroom
environment characterised by elements of critical pedagogy. These include
educating students to engage in critical dialogue with economics knowledge, to challenge
what is often taken for granted, and to question authority and power relations.
To achieve these ends, teachers
need to explore pedagogical approaches that develop the students’ ability to
become active participants in their own learning. Sober Giecek
(2000), for example, proposes lessons that attempt to foster critical dialogue
and reflection about ethical issues such as the distribution of wealth and
income. Spotton Visano (2018) shares her own experience of designing a
session where students have been invited to work on a problem from first
principles and have then proceeded to propose a solution in the form of a
financial contract between the parties involved. She reports that some students
have found it difficult to adapt to such an approach, especially those who have
become accustomed to the single authoritarian voice of a neoclassical textbook.
A pluralist pedagogical approach can empower
students to develop a critical consciousness about the economics knowledge
itself, empowering them to think pluralistically about the economy, and assisting
them to understand the social context within which they can exercise their own
judgment. Critical pedagogy inquires how and why economics knowledge gets
moulded the way it does, and how and why some constructions of reality are
legitimated by the dominant culture while others are not. Such a pedagogy has the
potential to raise student awareness of the many subtle ways in which a
privileged perspective may have come to dominate.
Within the alternative conceptualisation of economics education
proposed in this paper, teachers can educate young people for an active economic citizenship, emphasising that
policymakers and economists do not have a monopoly on the truth when it comes
to economic matters. Citizenship education involves exploring alternative courses of action, being aware of the
implications of one decision over another, and analysing the impacts of
decision-making on society, the economy and the environment. It is
closely connected with an understanding of economics because the discipline
provides the tools of evaluating policies in terms of the overall public interest, and empowers
students to develop an economic understanding of issues which enables them to
discuss the impacts of decisions on communities and the economy. This is a
particular contribution that economics education provides in assisting young
people to consider issues from a range of perspectives (Mizzi, 2021, 2023a).
Teachers thereby gradually
develop their students’ confidence that it is possible for them to generate
sound evaluations of economic issues and policy proposals based on their
knowledge of key economic theories and the understanding of underlying
political, ethical and economic assumptions. Furthermore, students can mature
in economic and financial literacies which cultivate in them financial and
economic attitudes, skills and behaviours (Mizzi, 2021,
2022, 2023b; Sun et al., 2020). For instance, Mizzi (2021) discusses how
school economics provided students with access to financial and economic
knowledge that could not be gained from their everyday experience.
While assisting their students to think
critically about the purpose and ends of economics, teachers can infuse ethical
and moral values into their teaching so as to assist in bringing back into economics its moral purpose. For
instance, when evaluating an economic argument, students are invited to
analyse which moral values and political goals are involved (Mizzi, 2023a).
Teachers can empower their students to reflect
that economics ought to serve the needs of the people and not the other way
around. A teacher’s mission is to shift the focus back to where it belongs –
the needs of persons and the environment (Mizzi, 2023a). Hence the importance
of discussing issues related to the distribution of wealth and sustainability,
especially in light of the United Nations’ sustainable
development goals.
In this paper, I argue for the importance
of an alternative conceptualisation of the teaching and learning of economics
as a means of overcoming the dominant messages of neoclassical economics which overemphasises the importance of mathematical
methods and promulgates a strong methodological predisposition that focuses on
competitive market processes for individual advantage to the exclusion of
social processes for common benefit. Such an approach excludes important
perspectives and hinders important debate.
A critical realist framework provides for
the possibility of an alternative paradigm in economics and economics education
that can dislodge the dominance of neoclassical economics and promote a perception of the discipline as a social science that
provides an explanatory function to help students better understand and improve
the world in which they live. This can equip young people with a wider
knowledge of how material relations can be organised in society and place them in
a better position to challenge the prevailing neoclassical economics ideology.
Insights and
implications for pedagogy resulting from the adoption of a critical realist
perspective have been explored. These include adopting a pluralist pedagogy
supported by a pluralist economics curriculum so as to engage
young people in critical pedagogy in economics education, cultivating values,
perceiving economic models as explanatory tools when exploring economic
reality, and enhancing citizenship education as well as financial and economic
literacy. Further research can explore how this pedagogy can be enacted during
the teaching and learning process at different levels of education.
The pedagogical approaches discussed have the
potential to offer students access to disciplinary knowledge that develops
their human powers, capabilities and agency. This epistemic access implies that
all young people are entitled to avail themselves of the opportunity to study
economics to foster their human development and flourishing (Mizzi, 2023b). A
more rewarding learning journey can be experienced where they understand more
deeply disciplinary knowledge in economics.
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