Discovering Diversity in Introductory Economics

Abstract

A bout one million students each year take a course in introductory economics, which means that a great deal of diversity already exists in introductory economics courses. Even a seemingly homogeneous group of students within a single class will come from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and have varied abilities, skills and diverse interests. These students can serve as a valuable source of information about the impact of race and gender on economic events. Their personal stories can supplement the data from published sources. Incorporating race and gender will provide more realism in describing and explaining economic life; it should also encourage a more varied group of students to investigate economics courses.Peggy McIntosh (1983McIntosh ( , 1990) was one of the first to offer a model of how to integrate race and gender into the content of any discipline, including economics. At the outset, economics, like any other discipline, is universal in time and place. Considerations of race and gender are irrelevant since the analysis applies to every human being. Many introductory economics textbooks and courses operate at this first stage.Feiner and Morgan (1987) found that women were mentioned less than 1 percent of the time in 21 leading introductory textbooks. When they were mentioned, the texts tended to put them in special chapters on "women's issues" or "special topics" like discrimination or poverty. In a reexamination of 16 of these texts, Feiner (1993) found that while five textbooks had increased their coverage, three textbooks had decreased their coverage. Ferber (1995) reviewed nine leading textbooks to find that the influx of married women into the labor force-one of

Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment

“…Both instructors noted that women students were more active participants in the inverted class than in traditional classes, suggesting they were more comfortable in the cooperative classroom environment." Bartlett (1996) and Baxter Magolda (1992) explain that, in general, female students prefer concrete experiences to abstract conceptualization. Similarly, Sandler, Silverberg, and Hall (1996) argue that women prefer opportunities to relate material to their own lives.…”

“…This finding, combined with the gender implications discussed above, suggests that in order to increase interest in economics among a more diverse group of students, one might consider teaching with a variety of methods. Given that learning styles do not appear to be randomly distributed across demographic groups (Bartlett 1996), it is not surprising that a traditional lecture classroom appeals to a relatively narrow and homogenous subset of students. A more inclusive classroom environment, such as the inverted classroom, allows students who do not learn best in the traditional format to learn in alternative ways.…”

Incorporación de la perspectiva de género en el TFG: una experiencia en el Grado de Economía de la USC

“…Desde nuestro punto de vista es necesario, a partir de la disponibilidad de estadísticas que permitan diferenciar el comportamiento de las variables económicas según género, realizar la reformulación de las técnicas de análisis bajo esta perspectiva. Tal y como señala Bartlett (1996) la estadística descriptiva sobre la actividad económica se debe ilustrar y humanizar con referencias a las diferencias de raza y género. Este autor considera que en asignaturas como macro y microeconomía no se ha atendido a cuestiones como ¿qué sucedió con el crecimiento del producto interior bruto con la incorporación de las mujeres al mercado de trabajo en la década de los años 60 y 70?…”

Incorporating Service-Learning into the Economics Curriculum

“…Third, service-learning may make economics more accessible to women and minorities and thus increase the representation of these groups in economics courses and the major (McGoldrick and Ziegert 2002). Bartlett (1996) suggests that learning style is important and that women and minorities tend to be active learners who have a more effective learning experience when they are able to relate or connect the material to experiences from their own lives. However, as Bartlett (1996) suggests, textbooks and economics course instructors often to do present the material in a way that would allow women and minorities to make the connection between their personal experiences and the material.…”