Title: Economic education is socio-economic education: foundations of a reflexive business and economic education

Authors: Georg Tafner

Addresses: Institute for Educational Sciences, University College of Teacher Education Styria, Theodor-Körner-Straße 38/III, 8010 Graz, Austria

Abstract: Even though we live in an economised society, attitudes towards business and economics span from hostility to glorification. Several responses are discussed: the idea of an economised society can be denied, it can be accepted as a social phenomenon without consequences for economic education, or instrumental rational economisation maximising self-interest can be the objective of economic education. Alternatively, the didactical concept of reflexive business and economic education treats human beings as individuals and - indivisibly - social creatures embedded in culture and society. The crux of economic education lies in the distinction between lifeworld economy and scientific economics. Mainstream economics follows a pleonastic economic rationality, its modelling abstracted from institutions, structures, power, and contingencies. A pedagogically acceptable approach cannot place instrumental rationality maximising self-interest at the core of the lifeworld. The contribution describes the wheel of socio-economic education, which connects the economic dimensions of the lifeworld with the social, political and ethical dimensions.

Keywords: reflexive business and economic education; the wheel of socio-economic education; ethical and moral dimension; social and political dimension; mainstream economics; efficiency; responsibility; meaning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPEE.2019.106098

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 2019 Vol.10 No.4, pp.318 - 334

Received: 23 Apr 2019
Accepted: 10 May 2019

Published online: 30 Mar 2020 *

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