Measuring and Responding to Variation in Aspects of Students’ Economic Conceptions and Learning Engagement in Economics

Operationalising a Threshold Concept in Economics: A Pilot Study Using Multiple Choice Questions on Opportunity Cost

“…Variation in students' liminality (the term coined in Meyer and Land (2006) to describe variation in the 'threshold state' of acquiring a given discipline-based threshold concept) may be dependent upon their acquisition of these other types of concepts. Failure to articulate an understanding of opportunity cost may therefore be because the necessary supporting concepts (either personal or procedural) have not been sufficiently acquired by students to enable them to acquire, or express, a disciplinebased concept.This insight is also potentially consistent with previous work that has revealed a correlation between variation in economic misconceptions and measured student outcomes (Shanahan and Meyer 2003).To the extent that there is a negative association between students' acquisition of threshold concepts and their economic misconceptions, a greater understanding of students' liminality in threshold concepts may enhance our understanding of the factors underlying students' acquisition of economic misconceptions.…”

“…There are several components of formative and summative assessment in the course. Individually, students must respond (for credit toward their final course mark) to a series of statements referred to as the 'Reflections on Learning Inventory (RoLI)' which is designed to help students become aware of and improve their metalearning capacity (Shanahan and Meyer, 2003). One element of this inventory includes three scales, each based on five statements taken from previous students, about what they think economics is, their perceptions about the role of market forces in determining prices, and what they believe economists do.These statements are designed to detect variation in students' perceptions of these three economics-specific conceptual dimensions.…”

Threshold concepts in economics

“…While variation in English or maths skills may be relatively easily detected (and is often addressed in many standard programs) and variation in attitudes and approaches to learning detected with rather more effort, it requires more determination to discover how individuals vary in their understanding of, what on the face of it, many lecturers assume are "basic" and common-place economic concepts. These differences can include variation in students' understanding of such apparently familiar terms such as "price" or "markets" (Pang and Marton, 2003;Shanahan and Meyer, 2003;Shanahan, 2001, 2002). Students are likely to vary in how far they have progressed, individually, through necessary prior conceptual changessuch as the ability to integrate everyday experience with economic ideas (basic conceptual change)or their ability to understand abstract economic concepts based on other economic theory (discipline conceptual change) - (Davies and Mangan, 2007, pp.…”

Are Financial Education Programs Meeting the Needs of Financially Disadvantaged Consumers?

“…It has been shown in the general economic education literature that students' initial knowledge of a subject is an important predictor of how much they learn from the instruction Shanahan, 1999 and2001;Shanahan & Meyer, 2003). Targeted teaching methods that respond to individual variation in prior knowledge of the subject may improve the program's overall impact (Meyer & Shanahan, 2001).…”