JonesLearnUK

  In excited support of the release of the fabulous new book ‘Organise Ideas’ from Oliver Caviglioli and David Goodwin, I am sharing some of the various ways I have used word diagrams in my own practice. I hope these posts will be of particular use to teachers of economics and business, but also more widely! Why use Venn diagrams? Venn diagrams are simple, quick, efficient and easy. Students can get started on comparing two things within a matter of seconds. They are ideal for clear, visual comparison and students can usually, assuming some reasonable recall of knowledge, easily identify a list of features of at least one of the things. They can then check down their list to see if each feature is also a feature of the other thing and thus decide where to write the feature on the diagram. Why is it useful for students to make comparisons in their retrieval practice? I often need to teach students about concepts that have a partner pair; demand and supply; free market econo...

What a day! I was absolutely thrilled to have had the opportunity to share research-inspired examples from my practice at the 2021 researchED National Conference. Thank you so much if you came along to listen! Slides available here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lLbZHJa-VFRtZ4GQgGZiadgarfPxxfPt/view?usp=drivesdk Handout available here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sWzs0e8SNTrFmyjG6Ddokmn6F9TAkKG7/view?usp=drivesdk I very much hope you will find them useful & interesting! If you enjoyed this - you may also enjoy my 2020 BrewEdClee presentation on the same theme - different content though! Video:  CogSci-o-nomics !    

I've been keenly exploring the booklet concept recently and decided to produce one for microeconomics! I'm really enjoying using this myself and hope you will find it useful too! This booklet covers basic, core content for the 'theory of the firm' - primarily focused around understanding of cost and revenue diagrams.  I am using the booklet: - to reduce the time students spend copying notes - the core content is typed into the booklet, so students just draw the diagrams and annotate the text with their own additional notes/examples.  - to aid student organisation - all the core diagrams are located in one place. - alongside other activities - I am adding my own explanations, examples and further activities also (for example, I also gave students: a longer written article on diminishing returns; cost calculation exercises in tables; further notes and examples of economies of scale; a table of the characteristics of market structures etc). I may consider adding more of th...

  WHAT TO TEACH, AND WHEN? The Structure of Content, Choosing Contexts, and the Repeating Quest – Part 1 The thinking in this section accepts: -           That in economics we will teach students the core canon of existing economic thought (presented as ‘the best we have thus far’, rather than ‘fact’) in terms of substantive knowledge. -           That we will also teach the required 'user' disciplinary knowledge elements of application, analysis and evaluation to enable students to become skilful users of existing theory, as well as developing 'theorist' disciplinary knowledge and wider awareness by questioning existing theory and highlighting the continued development of the subject. The Structure of the Subject I conceive of the substantive subject knowledge in economics as being arranged in different parts or layers. I have named this idea: the ‘Russian doll model’. The core area...

  WHAT TO TEACH? The Nature and Purpose of Economics as a Subject. What IS economics? It’s an odd starting point, but crucially important! As Backhouse and Medema (2009) explore in their interesting article on the definition of economics, “economists are far from unanimous about the definition of their subject”. So, step one involves deciding in some form what in fact is the subject you are trying to teach! My own conclusion to this question is that economics is the subject in which we study how groups of individuals allocate resources. Whilst I do allude in my teaching to the fact that societies could use all manner of methods to allocate resources (strength, intelligence, need etc.), in reality, the primary field of study is exploring the degree of use societies make of a free market system to do this versus a system of government invention. What truth are we seeking? A popular idea in curriculum thinking is that of ‘truth’. What ‘truth’ are we seeking in economics? At ...

  Curric-onomics  (n): A collection of brief thoughts and notes on my thinking relating to designing an economics curriculum. Offered as blog posts.   Available now: WHAT TO TEACH? The Nature and Purpose of Economics as a Subject. WHAT TO TEACH, AND WHEN? The Structure of Content, Choosing Contexts, and the Repeating Quest – Part 1 Coming soon! WHEN TO TEACH? The Repeating Quest – Part 2 HOW MUCH TO TEACH? Front-loading, Pattern Training and the Path to Network Thinking  WHEN TO TEACH? Ensuring a Memorable Sequence  HOW TO TEACH? Please see other blogs I have written on various aspects of application of cognitive science within teaching and learning, as well as my BrewEdClee 2021 video, CogSci-o-nomics !  Further Sources for Economics Curriculum Inspiration @econosaurus - Twitter, web chat & blog - https://www.econosaurus.co.uk/ Sequencing - https://www.econosaurus.co.uk/single-post/econ-ed-chat-june @apwlay - Twitter & blog - https://teachingextern...

  Missing Chapters There are some excellent books out there on curriculum. My eyes were opened by Mary Myatt (2018); Clare Sealy and co. (2020) enriched my understanding; Ruth Ashbee (2021) schooled me further in theory, concepts and language. But every time I get to the section on ‘subjects’ in any education book, I flick tentatively through the pages, yet I know in my heart of hearts that there probably isn’t going to be a section on my subject! That is absolutely not a criticism of these amazing and incredibly useful books though. There are a great many ‘small’ subjects out there and there are, of course, practical limits to what can and should realistically be published in a book that is written for all teachers, and thus (obviously) not  every  subject can feature. Furthermore, even if one attempted obsessively to try to include them all, what would one actually write? Often very little exists for small subjects in terms of a developed subject community or rele...