Evaluates 1991 report of Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI) on advanced level work in business education and economics for levels 16-19 in United Kingdom. Discusses areas of improvement and specific examples of good practice identified by HMI. Reports HMI's desire for better, more formalized departmental organization and the need for more in-service…

Recommends that economics instruction begin a synthesizing process early by connecting discussion of the production possibilities curve and the supply curve. Suggests that linking the two is logical for conveying integrated economic thinking to beginning students. Argues that such a link makes it easier to discuss the competitive norm. (DK)

Evaluates the Mini-Enterprise in Schools Project (MESP), part of a larger pilot curriculum being tested in Scottish primary schools. This preliminary evaluation reports on the overall effectiveness of the MESP by identifying a range of achievements and successes, the ways in which attendant problems were solved as they arose, and the changes which…

Discusses the content and cognitive specification of the third edition of the Test of Understanding in College Economics. Presents examples of the construction and sampling criteria employed in the latest and previous versions of the test. Explains that the test emphasizes recognition and understanding of basic terms, concepts, and principles with…

July 2001 to June 2003 may have been dismal for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (down 14 percent), but it was a bull market for economics majors (up 23 percent). The greatest increase in undergraduate economics degrees over the two-year period was at state universities (up 32 percent), in particular large flagship state universities with…

In this article, the authors provide a historical review of how the U.S. government has funded its participation in major wars during the past 150 years. They focus attention on five conflicts--the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Those conflicts were funded in different ways, with each funding method…

An increasing number of non-statistical software packages are being written as supplementary instructional materials provided free or at low cost for economics principles textbooks. This paper reviews the software programs currently available as ancillary material to several major texts and compares what is available as a group against what should…

An evaluation of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in economics showed that CAI does improve student scores but not significantly more than traditional assignments. Results indicated that CAI is better than just using lectures to teach economics, and that, while, CAI is not better than traditional assignments, it is not any worse. (RM)

Reports the results of a project designed to analyze the employment related needs of students in post secondary education. Describes the questionnaire used as the major instrument for the project. Analyzes the results relative to students and tutors, courses, industries, firms, employers and trade unionists, and makes recommendations. (KO)

Reviews 21 one-semester economics textbooks using Kenneth E. Boulding's ideas for introductory textbooks. Lists 240 concepts and topic areas in macroeconomics, microeconomics, public policy, and international economics that may be covered in a textbook. (NL)

The authors extend the standard education production function and student time allocation analysis to focus on the interactions between student effort and performance over the semester. The purged instrumental variable technique is used to obtain consistent estimators of the structural parameters of the model using data from intermediate…

The authors present a series of writing assignments that teaches students how to evaluate and critique the written economic work of others. The foundation text is McCloskey's (2000) Economical Writing. The students' dialogues with McCloskey, with each other, and with the authors of the pieces they evaluate sharpen their understanding of, and…

This paper estimates the effect of a state-imposed curriculum mandate on the academic achievement of US public school students. By 1998, 14 states across the US had mandates that high school students should take an economics course. For these states, the proportions of public schools students taking high school economics was around twice that of…

This article illustrates the flexibility and appropriateness of computer networks as an instructional resource for developing basic economic education programs for students with varying characteristics (e.g., public school students, home-bound adults, university-based students, and other adults, etc.). (CT)

This article presents the Practical Action Teaching Model and discusses its four phases: identification of the practical problem, practical reasoning or deliberation, action, and reflection. It incorporates intrinsically motivating, practical, value-based student problems that call for critical and creative thinking and offer opportunities for…