Report of the Committee on Economic Education

Abstract

A major development in 2004 was the launch of a CEE-sponsored “Teaching Innovations Program” (TIP) for faculty members in economics. It is funded by a $675,000 grant over five years from the National Science Foundation and is co-directed by William Walstad and Michael Salemi. It has three phases for faculty participation. In Phase 1, faculty members will attend instructional workshops where they will work in teams to learn about interactive learning strategies and materials. Two such workshops are planned for May and June of 2005—one at the University of North Carolina and the other at Georgetown University. Additional workshops will be offered and new participants will be recruited during each year of the project. In Phase 2, faculty members will return to their home institutions, receive online instruction to help use the new teaching strategies they learned at the workshops, and apply interactive methods for teaching in their courses. In Phase 3, they will have opportunities to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning in economics by sharing teaching experiences, writing papers, and attending meetings on teaching. A more detailed description of TIP and information on how to apply for workshops can be found at www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/AEACEE/ TIP . The CEE sponsored two paper sessions as part of the AEA program at the ASSA meetings. The first paper session was on “Perspectives on Research and Teaching in Economics.” It was chaired by Dan Hamermesh and organized by William Walstad. The paper by William Becker and Peter Kennedy reports the results from responses received from active researchers in economics who were asked if they could cite a specific instance in which their research was substantively influenced by their teaching. The paper by William Walstad and Sam Allgood presents the results from a national survey of economics faculty on their views about the relationship between teaching and research. The paper by Ronald Ehrenberg studies the decreasing share of the undergraduate students being taught by full-time tenure and tenure-track faculty and increasing shares taught by “contingent faculty” (full-time non-tenure-track and parttime faculty and graduate students). John Siegfried, Cecilia Rouse, and David Colander served as discussants for the session. The three papers are published in this issue of the Papers and Proceedings. The second CEE paper session focused on “New Developments in High School Economics” to give attention to recent activity at the pre-college level. It was chaired by Michael Watts and organized by William Walstad. The paper by Alan Krueger discusses using a webbased questionnaire for providing economics instruction in high school. The second paper, by Don Leet and Jane Lopus, offers ten observations on U.S. high-school economics textbooks using the Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics as one reference for content coverage. The third paper, by Stephen Buckles and William Walstad, explains the development and characteristics of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in economics that will be administered in 2006. The fourth paper, by Michael Watts and William Walstad, offers a review of research on economic education at the pre-college level and provides an agenda for future research. The session discussants were Rae Jean Goodman, Bonnie Meszaros, Gail Hoyt, and Claire Melican. Some of these papers will likely be published in a future issue of the Journal of Economic Education. The Committee continues to believe that workshops on teaching provide a valuable service to Association members, so for the ninth year, the Committee sponsored a one-day workshop as part of the AEA program at the ASSA meetings. The first workshop session was “Class Discussion: After an Experiment: Making Sure that the Students Get It.” It was chaired by Rachel Croson and organized by Charles Holt, and they also served as panelists. It featured presentations from Mark Maier, Charles Holt, Lisa Anderson, and David Reiley, all of whom have substantial and varied experience with using experiments for classroom instruction. This session offered good insights and suggestions for reinforcing and enhancing stu-