AN INVESTIGATION ON THE BEST TEACHING METHOD TO TEACH ECONOMICS IN SECONDARY SCHOOL ( EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The complexity and interaction of phenomena that take place in everyday life requires the cooperation of different disciplines. Prerequisite for this cooperation is the complementarity of the sciences in order to achieve scientific advances but also to interpret the world (Brinia & Vikas, 2014). Interdisciplinary starts at first in the level of scientific research and then it extends to the field of education (Matsagouras, 2004). Moreover, according to Kouzelis (2005), the field of both Epistemology and Teaching coincides to a large extent, as both sectors are investigating the process by which knowledge is built or formed. Interdisciplinary is becoming very popular in teaching Economic Sciences. When teaching Economics in Senior High School, teachers are often facing various challenges related on how they can make their students understand basic economic phenomena, relevant terms and their application in everyday life. In order to overcome such challenges, teachers must discover and apply new teaching methods which are compatible with the needs, the interests and the abilities of their students. Our proposing method is a combination of teaching through art, cooperative and experiential learning and project method. The proposed method is based on a research that was carried out in a senior high school and has remarkable results regarding the didactic methodology. The purpose of this paper is to present this innovative method, to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of students during this teaching process and to examine the extent to which this method can contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning.
Economics has been defined by different people in different ways. Economics is the study of ways of making choices and allocating scarce resources to satisfy human wants. It is the study of how people and societies make decisions; allocate and manage scarce resources to achieve their needs. In this view, Hall, (2013) defined Economics as the study of how individuals, firms and whole societies identify their most important needs, allocate and manage scarce resources in such a way that satisfies as many needs as possible. Since resources are scarce while human wants are insatiable, Economics deals with the study of how people utilize scarce resources in face of unlimited wants. Economics is the study of human attitudes towards satisfying their needs. Economics is concerned with human behavior such as how people earn their living and make choices between alternatives to satisfy their wants; it focuses on the study of firms and the government whose activities are geared towards the production of goods and services for the satisfaction of human want (Yusuf, 2012).
