Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate one effort to challenge the problematic assumptions of the dominant narrative of neoclassical economics within a teacher preparation program that focuses on addressing dominant narratives throughout the social studies curriculum.ĭesign/methodology/approach: Utilizing a theoretical framework that intersects Pedagogical Content Knowledge and pluralist economics, this study consists of a general interpretive study conducted in a master’s plus certification social studies methods course.
Social studies teacher education must purposefully integrate economics content into the exploration of the past and a discussion of future action for justice in order to combat prevailing content knowledge issues in preservice teachers and to help them reconcile their purpose for teaching social studies through economics. Unfortunately, limited familiarity and content knowledge inhibit a broader application of the function of economics. These results show that economics can be a significant part of a social studies education practice that seeks to analyze society, understand the past, and take action for a better future. However, preservice teachers’ purposes for social studies extended beyond the function of economics into the past, and informed active citizenship for future action. The results indicate that preservice teachers’ purpose for teaching social studies and the function of economics were aligned in the mission to critically analyze society. Specifically, it seeks to understand the pedagogical tenets of social analysis with the idea of a counter-hegemonic stance, the study offers insight into the role of economics as part of a broadly critical social studies teacher education program. Utilizing case study methods and a theoretical framework that intersects critical pedagogy as part of a broader, critical, social studies pedagogy. This study speaks to the limited literature on economics way that preservice teachers in an urban teaching program conceptualize the function of economics within social studies. This article demonstrates the patriarchal foundations and ramifications of an unquestioned adherence to neoclassical orthodoxy, the omnipresent paradigm of economic thought that has become unquestioned dogma in K-12 social studies (E. The overwhelming adherence to neoclassical economics in K-12 state and national standards (MacDonald & Siegfried, 2012 National Council for Economic Education, 2010 Walstad & Watts, 2015) and economics textbooks (Lee & Keen, 2004 Leet & Lopus, 2007) means that students of economics often leave their economics courses believing that neoclassical economics is economics, which excludes other paradigms that challenge the problematic assumptions of the neoclassical model. Scholars have argued that these assumptions are deleterious to social health and democracy (Daly & Cobb, 1994 Earle, Moran, & Ward-Perkins, 2016 Marglin, 2008) yet, they would be less dangerous if neoclassical economics was not taken as gospel by a large percentage of economists (Keen, 2011) and an even larger percentage of K-12 economics and social studies educators (Khayum, Valentine, & Friesner, 2006 Leet & Lopus, 2007). Further, neoclassical theory assumes that the market can be studied with all the accuracy and confidence of the physical sciences (Rosenbaum, 2000) and, thus, policy decisions can be made with all the confidence of mathematic exactitude (Bresser-Pereira, 2012).
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