1st Edition
Principles and Pluralist Approaches in Teaching Economics Towards a Transformative Science
This volume is a state-of-the-art compilation of diverse and innovative perspectives, principles, and a number of practiced approaches of fields, courses, and methods of pluralist economics teaching. It fosters constructive controversy aiming to incite authors and commentators to engage in fruitful debate.
The complex economic problems of the 21st century require a pluralist, real-world oriented, and innovative discipline of economics, capable of addressing and teaching those complex issues to students from diverse perspectives. This volume addresses a number of key questions: Which models could be taught outside the equilibrium and optimality paradigm? Which methods could help to improve our understanding of the complex globalized economy? How can qualitative and quantitative methods be combined in a fruitful way to analyze complex economic problems? How can the academic isolation of mainstream economics that has developed over many decades be overcome, despite its attempted transdisciplinary imperialism? What role should knowledge from other disciplines play in teaching economics, and what is the relevance of transdisciplinarity? Through examining these issues, the editors and authors have created a pluralist but cohesive book on teaching economics in the contemporary classroom, drawing from ideas and examples from around the world.
Principles and Pluralist Approaches in Teaching Economics is a unique collection of diverse perspectives on the methodology and applications of pluralist economics teaching. It will be a great resource for those teaching economics at various levels as well as researchers and intermediate and advanced students searching for pluralism in economics.
Towards a pluralist economic education for a transformative science – Introduction. Part 1: Principles of Teaching Pluralist Economics. 1. The Second Opinion: An Ethical Approach to Learning and Teaching Economics. 2. Making the incommensurable comparable: A comparative approach to pluralist economics education. 3. What can teaching critical pluralist economics gain from "de-othering" sociology?. 4. Comparing paradigms on a level playing field. 5. It Needs Two Eyes to See in Perspective: Teaching Economics through the Confrontation of Dissenting Views. 6. Economic competence, economic understanding, and reflexive judgment: A social theory of teaching teachers of economics. Part 2: Approaches and Building Blocks. 7. Introduction to Critical Political Economy in a multi-paradigmatic setting. 8. Heterodox perspectives in teaching the European integration and crisis: Critical political economy and post-Keynesianism. 9. Ecological economics in research and teaching: A matter of theoretical and ideological perspective. 10. Suggestions for incorporating sustainability into the macroeconomics course. 11. Demand-driven ecological collapse. A stock-flow fund-service model of money, energy and ecological scale. 12. Teaching feminist economics through student-written diaries. 13. Undermining the microeconomic textbook approach: Steps towards competitive pluralism. 14. Functional income distribution in economic paradigms: The failure of the neoclassical approach and alternatives. 15. The balance-sheet approach to macroeconomics. 16. How to teach Ethics & Economics to undergraduate students?. 17. Addressing controversies in economics instruction through interdisciplinary learning communities: The Evergreen experience. Part 3: Teaching for Socio-Ecological Transformation: Economics as a Transformative Science?. 18. Contours of a critical transformative science. 19. Transformative Economics – Calling for a more conscious relationship between economics and society. 20. Tackling the roots: (Economic) Education for social-ecological transformation and degrowth societies. 21. Pluralist economics is taking shape. But further steps have to follow – Conclusion. Appendix: Documentation: PEP—Promoting Economic Pluralism. A basic text of The Foundation for Promoting Reform towards pluralist Economics for the Public Interest (PREP)
Biography
Samuel Decker is an economist and activist based in Berlin, Germany. He works as a scientific assistant for the online learning platform Exploring Economics (www. exploring-economics.org/en/). He holds a master’s degree in Political Economy of European Integration and is an active member of the student movement for pluralism in economics.
Wolfram Elsner was Professor of Economics at the University of Bremen, Germany, from 1995 until he retired in 2016. He has also worked as head of local economic development, head of the Planning Division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the State of Bremen, and as director of the State of Bremen government’s economic research institute from 1986 to 1995. He was president of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy from 2012 to 2016.
Svenja Flechtner is an Assistant Professor of Pluralist Economics at the University of Siegen, Germany. She has been a research assistant at Europa-Universität Flensburg and Freie Universität Berlin. From 2014 to 2018, she was a council member of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.
