IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ireced/v30y2019ic1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessment of economic threshold concepts in higher education

Author

Listed:
  • Tang, Tommy

Abstract

Economics educators generally agree that opportunity cost and price mechanism are economic threshold concepts. If we assess students’ higher order thinking in the academic context, we would expect a strong association between students’ demonstrated ability of applying threshold concepts in real life context and their academic achievement. In this interview study, no such association was observed. The paper argues that current economics education over-emphasises the acquisition of technical skills, at the expense of integrative understanding, resulting in the observed lack of real world relevance by economics students and contributing to the continuous decline in economics enrollment in Australian universities.

Suggested Citation

  • Tang, Tommy, 2019. "Assessment of economic threshold concepts in higher education," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 1-1.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ireced:v:30:y:2019:i:c:1
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iree.2018.11.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388018300781
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.iree.2018.11.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kathryn L. Combs & Monica E. Hartmann & Joseph L. Kreitzer, 2023. "An International Exercise to Increase Awareness of How Market, Political, and Cultural Institutions Affect Economic Activity," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 54-77, January.
    2. Ramlee Ismail & Mohd Yahya Mohd Hussin & Fidlizan Muhammad, 2019. "Economic Literacy: Does It Matter for Policy Understanding?," Research in World Economy, Research in World Economy, Sciedu Press, vol. 10(5), pages 104-112, December.
    3. Gawrycka, Małgorzata & Kujawska, Justyna & Tomczak, Michał T., 2021. "Self-assessment of competencies of students and graduates participating in didactic projects – Case study," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Threshold concept; Opportunity cost; Price mechanism; Knowledge transfer; Teaching approaches;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A22 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Undergraduate

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ireced:v:30:y:2019:i:c:1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-review-of-economics-education .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.