Thanks. I would certainly be interested in what your project in Derbyshire
is up to. There's a project in Kent for Economics & G&T which I have joined
but nothing much has happened so far. Given the option, I am more
interested in Economics than Bus St (although I teach both, and Critical
Thinking, which I think is a sadly negelected skill). You may be aware that
at the Easter (-ish) meeting chaired by Nancy Wall at the Nuffield
Foundation, your Threshold Concepts got a good airing and found a positive
response from pretty much everyone. I am introducing Economics next week
(having moved school) and I am trying to construct a SoW which focusses on
the skills of access to the content rather than merely on the content
itself. Given that Threshold Concepts act as a sort of 'gateway' I have
given them a central focus also, and I am trying to build up a series of
learning activities which allow students to acquire the concept, and for it
(where necessary) to replace the 'folk economics' which 'interferes' (to
borrow a term from EFL) with understanding. I have picked two as central -
prices, equilibria & markets- and elasticities. These are re-visited about
once a month, either as a stand-alone revision style drill (using, for
example, the on-line tests from Bized) or as an applied enquiry in context.
This draws from my (limited) understanding of learning theory and the idea
of 'distributed practice' as a key component of good learning. The problem,
I think, with content-driven A-levels is that any given topic gets one trot
round the arena, and then its time to move on. And then it's left to
revision time by which it's too late for the students who most need it -
revision if fine for facts but poor for concept acquisition.
So, that's the plan; we shall see if it works!
Richard
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