Is 'Chalk and Talk' the Best Way to Teach Economics?
By Paul
The following paper suggests that the ‘chalk and talk’ is still the preferred option for educating budding economists- the median of 83 percent remaining almost the same over the last 10 years.
A Little More Than Chalk and Talk: Results from a Third National Survey of Teaching Methods in Undergraduate Economics Courses by Michael Watts and William E. Becker. Here’s the abstract;
“In 1995, 2000, and 2005 the authors surveyed U.S. academic economists in the United States to investigate how economics is taught in four different types of undergraduate courses at postsecondary institutions. They looked for any changes in teaching methods that occurred over this decade, when there were several prominent calls for economists and post-secondary instructors in other fields to devote more attention and effort to teaching, and to make greater use of active, student-centered learning methods, with less use of direct instruction or “chalk and talk.” By 2005, although standard lectures and chalkboard presentations were clearly still the dominant teaching style in all types of economics classes, there was evidence of slow growth in the use of other teaching methods, including classroom discussions (especially teacher-directed discussions) and computer-generated displays (such as Power Point). A growing number of instructors provided students with a prepared set of class notes. Computer lab assignments were increasingly common in econometrics and statistics courses, and Internet database searches were used by a growing (though still small) minority of instructors in all types of classes. Classroom experiments were used by a small share of instructors in introductory courses, but almost never in other kinds of courses. Assignments or classroom references to the popular financial press, sports, and literature, drama, or music were used somewhat more often. Cooperative learning methods were rarely used in most types of courses.”
For Comment; How would economics teaching be like a decade from now? What incentives can we give for instructors to move away from the ‘chalk and talk’ style of teaching?