“The Cambridge International AS & A Level Economics Digital Teacher’s Resource can be read as a how-to guide. For example, it is filled with structured lesson plans on topics, featuring ready-made PowerPoints and worksheets. The intent, quite simply, was to provide everything an economics teacher might need for a successful 360hrs+ of teaching, all mapped out in a chronological order.
You might, however, choose to read it differently. You could regard it, not so much as a step-by-step guide, but, instead, to see it as a jumping off point. I guess what I’m trying to say is: you do not have to teach your version of economics in that order.
Step by step
It is my experience that a standard economics lesson in most schools has a fairly well-defined format. It might be that this represents the flow of lessons (plural) for a particular topic rather than one whole lesson, but the point still holds.
As teachers, we like to introduce concepts by defining them first and then using an activity to tease out further understanding. We then might use a case-study or two to enable students to apply their new understanding. Finally, we ask the learners to critique their original points (the definitions and the chains of analysis from the beginning of the lesson) to come up with a list of disadvantages and evaluative points.
Let’s take an example. A typical lesson(s) on Human Development Index (HDI) might look like this:
- Define HDI and look at the 3 specific measures within the index
- Explain why it is considered a good measure of economic development
- Classify different countries according to their HDI data
- Examine some reasons why HDI may not be a good indicator of economic development
- Make a judgement about HDI’s effectiveness
Let me be clear: there is no problem with this approach. In fact, one key advantage is that it helps to scaffold the learning material for students. This is because the cognitive demands are being increased very slightly at each stage, in a linear flow.
Higher order thinking skills
The previous approach is how many of the lesson plans are structured in the teacher’s resource. My point, however, is that you should feel free to mix it up; each lesson doesn’t have to be quite like this every time. For example, there is a world in which the HDI lesson runs quite differently. We could ramp up the cognitive demands from the outset of the lesson.
- Create your own measure of economic development
- Defend the reasons why it is a good measure of economic development
- Research what HDI is
- Compare HDI to your measure
- Judge whether HDI is a good measure of economic development
This is no longer a scaffolded lesson; the action verb in each bullet point now represents higher order thinking skills. The students are figuratively being thrown in at the deep-end*. As a result, we would hope that students are actually analysing, evaluating and creating throughout the topic and end up with a heightened understanding. It is a more aggressive type of teaching but it has the potential to be more fun, more exciting and (perhaps) more effective.
The disadvantage of a lesson like this is that it requires an effective plenary to bring all of the disparate ideas back into an intelligible whole. Students need to collect their thoughts and record them in a learnable order. Without that, as interesting as the lesson might be, they may take nothing away from it. Thankfully, the teacher’s resource has plenary ideas for you to use in every topic. In the chapter on HDI (chapter 50), for example, I have recommended that the students create a graphical organiser so that they illustrate the information in a way that is easy to comprehend and internalise.
I have written a significant number of higher order teaching activities for the teacher’s resource. My challenge to you is, once in a while, to mix up the chronology of the lesson and see where it takes you.”
George Vlachonikolis is the Head of Economics at Headington School, Oxford. He has taught economics for A Level and IB for 10 years and is keen to ensure that the subject is taught the right way for 21st century economists.
*thrown in at the deep end is a UK colloquialism meaning to do something difficult without preparation.
