Parallel to these curriculum scans focusing what is currently taught, an active literature strand emerged focusing on what should be taught, with major contributions generally taking the form of edited volumes. We discuss these in chronological order. For brevity, the literature review starts in 2007, the year the global financial crisis started and as a result the movement for economics curriculum reform received a major boost.
In this year Teaching Pluralism in Economics was published; a collection of essays edited by John Groenewegen, which discusses the desirability of pluralism and the different forms it can take, the importance and usefulness of interdisciplinarity, history, and problem-based learning, and differences between an economics education in the United States (US), Germany and the United Kingdom (UK).
Two years later the Teagle Foundation report was written by David Colander and KimMarie McGoldrick (2009) about how economics majors in US liberal education could be improved. The report argues programs should focus more on “big think” questions about highly complex issues as well as the real-world contexts in which economic problems are situated. Colander and McGoldrick also suggest experimenting with new teaching strategies, encouraging active classroom participation and open conversations, and developing teaching commons with openly shared materials and exercises. They also provide organisational suggestions for improvement, such as increasing attention to teaching skills as well as subjects such as economic history, history of economic thought and institutions in PhD programs so that the next generation of teachers will be better equipped and prepared.
The Teagle report was also the starting point of Educating Economists: The Teagle Discussion on Re-evaluating the Undergraduate Economics Major (2010), a collection of essays from a wide variety of perspectives. Among other questions, it discusses whether to deepen and/or broaden the scope of the programs, how best to teach students to think critically and independently, and the practicalities of organising economics education such as providing the right incentives to stimulate good teaching.
The year 2009, right after the start of the global financial crisis, saw two other important publications on economics education: Robert Garnett, Erik Olsen, and Martha Starr edited the volume Economic Pluralism (2009) of which the third part specifically focused on economics education. The volume gives a good overview of the debate surrounding economic pluralism with essays on, among other things, how to manage intellectual diversity to promote knowledge production, whether to base pluralism on Kuhn’s concept of incommensurability or Mill’s idea of fallibilism, the institutional heterogeneity in real-world economies, and how pluralist teaching can contribute to relevant skill formation among students desired by companies and governments.
Another book on the need for pluralism in economics is The Handbook of Pluralist Economics Education, a collection of essays edited by Jack Reardon (2009). It too contains detailed suggestions for teachers on how to reform principles, core theory and advanced economics courses. In this way, it provides fundamental critiques as well as concrete suggestions for how economics courses, from economics 101 and macroeconomics to labour and international economics, can be improved.
In 2011, INET’s UK Curriculum Committee wrote a proposal for undergraduate programs following these principles: a focus on the economy, rather than on a particular methodology of economics; a pluralist ‘one-problem-several-solutions’ approach; and a focus on the real world and on preparing students to work outside academia, rather than reproducing the skill-sets needed by academic professors.
2011 also saw one of the most extensive publications on economics education with the 850 pages long International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics edited by Gail M. Hoyt and KimMarie McGoldrick. The book starts out by describing the history of economics education, different teaching and assessment techniques, and research findings on economics education and student performance. Numerous contributors to the book, furthermore, give reflections and suggestions on existing courses, from health economics and game theory to sport and urban economics. It concludes by discussing institutional and administrative aspects of economics education, such as faculty development, student characteristics, teaching enhancement initiatives, and international differences between educational systems.
Two collections of essays followed. 2012 saw the publication of What’s the Use of Economics? Teaching the Dismal Science After the Crisis edited by Diane Coyle. The book asks how new insights that have become prominent as a result of the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, such as the importance of the financial sector for macroeconomic developments, could be incorporated in economics education. The various authors, including several employers of economists, argue that the following ingredients are too often missing in current curricula: history and real-world context, practical skills for empirical analysis and the importance of inductive reasoning, attention to the limitations of modelling and deductive reasoning, a pluralist approach with multiple perspectives, and communication skills, especially of technical results to non-economists. The book also discusses how UK undergraduate economics programs, in particular, can be improved, by innovating teaching and testing, and rewarding good teaching rather than letting career success depend solely on publishing in US mainstream journals.
The second collection of essays, edited by Jack Reardon and Maria Alejandra Madi (2014), arrived at a slightly more radical conclusion. According to the various authors of The Economics Curriculum: Towards a Radical Reformulation, reforming economics education is not simply a matter of adding some topics to the curriculum, but fundamentally changing its core elements. The book starts out by analysing what is wrong with current programs and what they are missing. It then moves towards suggestions for how the curriculum could be improved and what such an improved program could look like. Core ideas are to centre a pluralist approach to theory, to actively discuss methodological issues, and to make real-world and historical knowledge key ingredients of any curriculum.
In that same year, the French Ministry of Education (2014) concluded that French economics programs were insufficient in preparing students for their future societal roles. The report argued curricula should pay more attention to real-world knowledge and interdisciplinarity.
In 2016, the debate further progressed thanks to two books that each in their own way forcefully argued for fundamentally altering economics education. In From Economics to Political Economy: The problems, promises and solutions of pluralist economics, Thornton (2016) argues for disciplinary differentiation and institutional independence. Disciplinary differentiation involves reverting back to the original name of the discipline (political economy) and broadening the field by including economic history, history of economic thought, a diversity of theoretical perspectives, economic development, and comparative economic systems. Institutional independence involves operating outside economics departments (for example, in departments of political science or management). In his words, rather than trying to continue a “dialogue with the deaf ” inside economics departments, reform-minded students and academics may benefit from more carefully contemplating the full range of available reform strategies. The analysis includes detailed case studies of successful and unsuccessful attempts at change within and outside economics departments.
More recent contributions to the debate include two collections of essays edited by three German economists, Samuel Decker, Wolfram Elsner and Svenja Flechtner: Advancing Pluralism in Teaching Economics (2018) and Principles and Pluralist Approaches in Teaching Economics (2019). These two books further explore why and how to teach economics in a pluralist way. They discuss how this pluralist approach could be applied to different topics and countries, together with discussions of recent development in economics education in Brazil, India, China, Ghana, Germany and France.
In 2018, Yurko interviewed employers of economists, primarily in the UK, about their needs and perceptions of economics graduates. The findings align with previous research, indicating that employers value application, communication, intellectual openness, and critical-thinking skills but find them lacking in economics graduates. However, this deficit is attributed not to the quality of graduates but rather to deficiencies in university economics curricula, particularly in application and communication skills. Suggestions for reform include integrating diverse learning materials, adopting problem-based learning methods, promoting peer-led discussions and group assessments, and encouraging undergraduate research projects. Despite methodological limitations, these findings underscore the need for a more practical and historically aware economics curriculum to better prepare graduates for the workplace.
In 2021, Sam de Muijnck and Joris Tieleman published Economy Studies: A Guide to Rethinking Economics Education, a handbook designed to help educators and students find the relevant teaching materials and provides a menu of options for reform.
Victor Beker has published two books, in 2022 and 2023, focusing on understanding economics as social science trying to explain real world economic phenomena and policy issues and introducing students to the key insights of different perspectives.
Young economists from Latin America, led by Andrés Lambertini and Ignacio Silva Neira, published an open access book in 2022 which explores the experience of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, México, and Uruguay, providing a critical reflection on the economic teaching, the historical context when the neoclassical paradigm was implemented, and the societal impact it has particularly through influencing government policy.
To help microeconomics educators, Mark Maier and Phil Ruder broad together a collection of chapters in 2023 providing reflections, summaries of studies, practical advice and ready-to-use teaching examples. In doing so, they discuss how to capture students’ attention and ensure their continued engagement, include course content that focuses on important public policy topics and pressing issues within modern society, adopt evidence-based pedagogical strategies in the classroom and online, and tackle issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the discipline.