Improving the Teaching of Economics: Achievements and Aspirations.

Apparently somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of all economists make a significant part of their living by teaching as of May 1984. Yet only a minuscule part of their professional training is focused on how to become a good teacher. It is not clear that teaching performance in the U.S. is much better now than it was twenty-five or fifty years ago. The Committee on Economic Education (CEE) of the American Economic Association (AEA) has since the 1950's operated under a broad and challenging mandate to help improve the teaching in college and university economics. The CEE played a major role in a big push to improve teaching at all levels during the 1960's. Activities included a National Task Force on Economic Education, comprised of six of the nation's most distinguished economists who were asked to suggest the economic essentials that each citizen-to-be should have in democratic, largely market-directed economy, a year-long CBS and PBS economics course, including work for credit at many colleges and universities, a nationwide program of summer workshops for teachers and a major push on research on the effectiveness of different kinds of teaching.