first thoughts on devising an economics curriculum

 

I’ve kept slightly detached from some of the discussions around curriculum that I’ve seen on blogs and CPD sessions in the last 18 months or so. This is partly because I’ve found it slightly too abstract and also that teaching Economics, I don’t have pupils for as long as most subjects so cannot devise a y 7-11 curriculum and have far less choice about what to teach.

Having said that, I have recently read Kat Howard and Claire Hill’s book ‘Symbiosis’ and 'Gallimaufray to Coherence' by Mary Myatt which has inspired me to rethink how I consider the curriculum. In particular for KS4. My school start key stage 4 in year 9 so I have pupils for 3 years for their Economics GCSE.

Previously I have worked sequentially through the specification but pupils ‘symbiosis’ has got me thinking about what the golden threads are that link the subject together and what the big ideas are that I want pupils to consider and how they can build on this through their 3 years of study.

Before I did this, I wrote every topic in the specification out and on a piece of paper linked together where they relate to one another. For example, scarcity links clearly to opportunity cost and price, but also to efficiency and producer aims.

I don’t have as much freedom as some subjects in choosing what to teach but by finding the common links a key narrative became apparent.

For me, the joy of economics is questioning how do we allocate resources and what role the government have in creating the economy we want for our society.

So pupils need to understand why resources are scarce (what we call the economic problem). Then they need to build on that by understanding how markets seek to allocate resources through the price mechanism so it seems logical to then teach this. Following on from this, it was important to understand why markets do not always operate efficiently. Once this is established it is logical to understand the potential role of government. Then to bring these topics together and to consider the economy from a different perspective I want pupils to consider the impact the market and government intervention have on workers.

I chose to frame this through several key questions I want pupils to answer. Underneath each topic, I have considered the specific knowledge and terminology that I want pupils to understand so they have a deep understanding of each component part to answering these questions, as seen below.

This is where I had to consider pre-requisite knowledge which took me away from traditional exam spec sequencing. For example, rather than looking at firms profitability as a separate topic in future years I introduce this when looking at the price mechanism as this makes understanding supply much easier and means when it is revisited in later years there is already some knowledge on the topic that can be activated.

What is important is that this is an evolution towards getting to an end goal of understanding the best way that to allocate resources in an economy. Given this, I then explicitly mapped what the links are between topics so I can ask pupils the similarities and differences between these topics. This is partly to force pupils to think deeply about the topics but also so that they understand how topics link together to make sure we can use economic models to understand the world.

I have explained the exact links that I want to explicitly teach below:

Then I wanted to look at different types of knowledge that Kat and Claire discuss. So I want to consider where they are opportunities to bring in hinterland knowledge to help bring the core knowledge to life. I found this tricky as on the one hand we are always considering how to limit extraneous load and now I am adding things that pupils do not need to remember. What I have tried to do in the main is to place economic theories into a historical context so they can understand the story of economic thought and how it has developed over time.

Similarly, with regards to procedural knowledge I have started to consider what practical steps I need to teach, specifically in terms of how to show changes in an equilibrium price on a diagram and develop a clear chain of reasoning for different economic agents.

A final part that I had not considered before was the disciplinary knowledge or how economists pursue truth. I don’t think I have thought this through fully yet and I am looking forward to discussing in department meetings with my team but I have thought about some of the concepts and constraints that I want pupils to understand, especially the challenges of experiments in a social science, the struggle of implementing ceterus paribus and how the insights into behavioural economics and growing concerns about environmental sustainability mean that we may need to rethink our economic models so they remain relevant.

Then into year 10, the overarching aim is the same but now we broaden it out so look at the whole national economy rather than individual firms and consumers. So pupils look at the role of business and financial institutions before looking at what the government want out of an economy and how it can be achieved.

At this point, we start to consider the debates in the subject and to what extent environmental concerns force economists to rethink a focus on traditional targets like economic growth.

Also, the key threshold concepts return so pupils must keep applying these to different contexts. So early on in year 9 pupils learned about demand in the context of scarcity. They then applied it to the price mechanism and later to labour markets Now in year 10 they look at aggregate demand for the whole economy before seeing how this can change with fiscal policy. So, the same core concept is explored 4 different times in 4 different contexts as it is a foundational tool used to analyse so many of the world’s problems.

Finally, in year 11 pupils then broaden this even further to look at international economics and how these same questions about how the market can allocate resources can be looked at to understand why countries are rich, if trade and globalisation benefits all and why free trade is so contentious an issue.

This is still a work in progress. I want this to form the basis for discussions about the subject within my team and also to think about the work pupils will produce and how they will be assessed to understand if they are progressing through the curriculum.  

If anyone economics teachers want to see the document that I’ve made a few screenshots of then please let me know. I should say I made this to help formulate my own thinking, not to fit some generic template as it’s really not about shoehorning thoughts into a spreadsheet to tick a box!