The Development of Prospective Economics Teachers' Explaining Skills

• In Event: 81.033 - MTCC Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: 81.033-7 - Breaking Barriers in Social Studies Instruction

Abstract

Teacher education at the university level predominantly aims at improving pedagogic abilities. One essential component of effective instruction, hence a core competence of teachers, is explaining subject matter. We aim to contribute to the field of competence measurement and development of prospective economics teachers by examining the following research questions
1.) Which aspects characterize a high quality economic explanation?
2.) Which of those aspects are learnable/improvable during teacher education?

In order to answer the first research question, we derived five quality aspects from a literature review. We then measured the development in the students’ economic explaining skills by video-taped simulated interactions in a standardized setting (treatment group: n = 49, control group = 30).

Authors

• Stefanie Findeisen, University of Mannheim

• Viola Deutscher, University of Mannheim

• Juergen Seifried, University of Mannheim