A Randomized Controlled Trial of Teaching Methods: Do Classroom Experiments improve Economic Education in High Schools?

Gerald Eisenkopf and Pascal Sulser

No 80, TWI Research Paper Series from Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz

Abstract: We present results from a field experiment at Swiss high schools in which we compare the effectiveness of a classroom experiment against conventional economics teaching. We randomly assigned classes into different teaching environments or a control group. Our results suggest that both teaching methods improve economic understanding considerably in contrast to classes without prior training. We do not observe a significant overall effect of the classroom experiment, but more able students benefit from the experiment while others lose out. Furthermore there is no robust impact of economic training on social preferences, measured as both individual behavior in incentivized decisions or political opinions.

Keywords: Education of Economics; Classroom Experiments; Field Experiments; Indoctrination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.twi-kreuzlingen.ch/wp-content/uploads/ ... f-sulser-2013-02.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Randomized controlled trial of teaching methods: Do classroom experiments improve economic education in high schools? (2016)
Working Paper: How to Improve Economic Understanding? Testing Classroom Experiments in High Schools (2013)
Working Paper: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Teaching Methods: Do Classroom Experiments Improve Economic Education in High Schools? (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:twi:respas:0080

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in TWI Research Paper Series from Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Urs Fischbacher ().