Introductory economics textbooks: what do they teach about sustainability?

Abstract

In response to accelerating ecological deterioration, many universities have made commitments to integrate sustainability across the curriculum and to ensure they graduate ecologically responsible citizens. This study involves a content analysis of the coverage of environment-economy linkages in introductory economics textbooks. In North America, introductory economics courses tend to cover similar content and to rely heavily on textbooks. A small number of standard textbooks dominate this market. Standard introductory economics textbooks in current use in British Columbia, Canada were included in the study as well as three leading US textbooks. These were contrasted against a pair of micro/macro introductory texts explicitly written to address sustainability. The standard textbooks are found to largely ignore or mischaracterise environment-economy linkages and to include little content that would help further student understanding of sustainability. Universities that have made a commitment to integrate sustainability across the curriculum should examine carefully the textbooks used in their introductory economic courses and give preference to textbooks that have integrated sustainability-relevant content throughout the text and have addressed both environment-economy linkages and the challenge of sustainability with sophistication.

Learning Economics and Attitudes to Market Solutions to Environmental Problems

“…These references are concentrated in microeconomics, such as market interventions to deal with negative externalities (e.g., government regulation on pollution) (cf. [5,6]). Existing evidence tells us rather little about the effect of economic teaching on the understanding of, and attitudes towards, environmental issues [7].…”

What do economic scholars consider powerful economic knowledge of importance for people in their private and public lives? Implications for teaching and learning economics in social studies

“…Of course, important economic knowledge can also be derived from leading textbooks, such as Samuelson's Economics in 1948, which is currently available in its 19th edition (Samuelson and Nordhaus 2010). It can still be considered the gold standard in teaching economics and has significantly influenced other textbooks in this field (Skousen 1997;Gottesman, Ramrattan, and Szenberg 2005;Green 2012). These textbooks affect pedagogical and epistemological processes, as they introduce students to the dominant orthodox narrative in economics, with the result that students 'retell the received "stories" of economics' (Richardson 2004, 518).…”

Poisoning the Well, or How Economic Theory Damages Moral Imagination

“…But the reality is that the simplistic view of economics dominates at all levels of economics education, as attested to by the cookie-cutter content of the most popular K-12 teaching materials, standardized tests, university introductory and intermediate microeconomic and macroeconomic theory textbooks, and graduate "core" theory courses (Nelson and Sheffrin 1991;Fullbrook 2003;Maier and Nelson 2008;Green 2012). Despite protests by students (Fullbrook 2003;Romero 2011) and efforts to broaden economics education (Groenewegen 2007;Nelson and Goodwin 2009;Reardon 2009), this hegemony continues.…”