Teaching Philosophy – Roderick G. Duncan
A question I like to ask myself when I am reviewing the material for a class is “what would I like my students to remember 1, 5 or even 10 years from now?” I find this question to be a useful guide to what I would consider good teaching.
In order for teaching to be useful it must be something that is remembered and for something to be truly memorable it has to be internalized by students. For example, you may forget what year the Declaration of Independence was written, but you never forget how to drive a car. The difference is that driving is internalized, whereas dates are rarely made a part of a person’s life.
So how do you get students to internalize economics? I believe the key is to have students use economic tools to work through problems and for them to see those tools at work. This emphasis on using the tools forms the basis of my teaching of smaller classes.
Examples of my different teaching styles are:
In my Cost-Benefit Analysis class, case studies are a good way for students to see tools in action and be given data that they can use their newly-acquired tools on. As we progress through the course, less and less class-time is taken up in lecture-format and more time is given over to case studies. The last few weeks of the class are entirely case study-driven.
In my Development Economics class, stress is placed on applying the material in the class to data from developing countries. Each student is required to choose a developing country and to gather data, do background reading, prepare material to present and prepare a term paper on that country- its problems and its progress.
For larger classes where there is less feedback between the professor and the students, the emphasis in the teaching should still be on the application of economic tools to the real world. Can we explain how quirks of the CAFE fuel standards laws led to the rise of the sports utility vehicle? Can we use the principle of the median voter to explain George Bush’s electoral campaign in 2000?
When I think about what I would like my students to remember, the principle of “less is more” becomes a deciding factor as to what material to include. Would I think it is important that my students remember a particular model of imperfect competition from their principles class or would I prefer that they have internalized the idea of opportunity cost? The latter is far more important for me.