New developments in the teaching of economics

During the Summer of 1966 the Stanford Graduate School of Business conducted, exclusively for economics instructors, a program entitled "New Developments in the Teaching of Economics." The uniqueness of this program lay in the fact that the main emphasis was on the methodology in teaching economics rather than on the content of economics courses.

Organizing and directing the program was both an alarming and rewarding experience. Alarm arose because of the seemingly small number of academic institutions which appeared to be concerned about how well they were teaching basic economics. As G. L. Bach points out in his paper, the bulk of the evidence we have tells us that we, as scientists, are not being very scientific about our teach ing, especially at the elementary level; we are not applying our pro fessional standards to ourselves as teachers. Unfortunately, many of us appear to be not overly concerned about the issue.

The rewards in organizing and directing the program were large. The participants were seriously interested in, and doing a better job of, teaching economics. They were highly enthusiastic and had made considerable sacrifices to attend the conference, to listen and discuss, to participate and experiment, and to devote scarce re sources to an end where rewards are uncertain.

Since the conference was limited to only 40 participants, it was decided to publish this volume to enable other members of the eco nomics profession to study and hopefully to implement some of the new developments in the teaching of economies which were discussed at the conference.