Title: Rethinking economic undergraduate textbooks - a trend toward pluralism?

Authors: Michael Mietz

Addresses: Rethinking Economics Ghent, Hoveniersberg 24, 9000 Gent, Belgium

Abstract: A movement calling for the 'rethinking' of economics has led to a renewed interest in engaging with the curriculum of economics education. These curriculum studies have found that undergraduate students are widely taught similar content, largely based on a stylised version of mainstream economics. New theoretical innovations at the research frontier have the potential to undermine a lot of the content students are taught, and usually offer a limited scope of answers to current real world issues. Using a technique in machine learning for natural language processing, we explore several widely used textbooks, coupled with a close reading. This type of approach could potentially help students and educators to quickly discover their thematic character. Our findings lend substance to the argument that popular textbooks largely present benchmark models, yet some innovative textbooks are exploring the benefits of a more pluralist presentation.

Keywords: rethinking economics; innovative textbooks; benchmark models; textbook market; pluralism; natural language processing; economics education; economics textbooks; curriculum studies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPEE.2023.136070

International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 2023 Vol.14 No.2, pp.146 - 172

Received: 13 Feb 2023
Accepted: 26 Jul 2023
Published online: 15 Jan 2024 *

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