On the agenda for February's EconEdChat were 3 questions:
How can we help students to develop their evaluation?
How can we ensure students have solid, flexible recall of knowledge?
How can we teach elasticities effectively?
This post focusses on the first question.
Links/References/Resources:
The nature of this discussion mean there aren't so many references!
We talk about different approaches to 'evaluation' between exam boards, but it's worth remembering that the assessment objective concerning evaluation is the same across all exam boards.
I didn't explain it very well, but at around 15 minutes I was trying to say that there are some trends/data/contextual examples that can be used to evaluate in a wide variety of markets. I mention that I usually pick and choose examples from Visual Capitalist to use as a starter.
I mentioned a 'straw-o-meter' which can be useful for evaluating causes, turns out it was a 'camel-o-meter' but I was close. Simon Beale posted about it in this tweet ,
The tweet also references Karen Knight's Extent-o-meter, which geography teacher Jen has also posted about (I'm not sure who originally made this diagram - if anyone recognises it for certain, please let me know). I'm in two minds whether this is useful in Econ, because on one hand it introduces students to the idea that nothing is absolute and starts those discussions of why they agree or disagree, but on the other hand I don't know if it would lead students away from a discussion of 'when is this true and when is it not true?'.
One thing that I'm surprised wasn't discussed more was what Sarah mentioned briefly as 'picking apart the chains', although I suppose it is just another was of 'knocking down the straw man'. In any case, I can't believe I forgot to discuss this further, as for me it's probably the technique I use most in the classroom, especially if I want to show students that just because we can make a chain from A to B, this doesn't mean that A will necessarily cause B.
Econ Ed Chat takes place the first Wednesday of the month at 6pm GMT. All welcome.