Abstract
A dispute over economics education occurred in Japan in 2013 when the draft of the Reference Standard for Economics Education (RS Economics) of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) was known to non-mainstream economists. This article reconsiders this dispute with its international background (OECD-AHELO, Bologna Process, QAA's Subject Benchmark Statement for Economics in the UK). OECD's AHELO project could not proceed from its Feasibility Study to Main Study. QAA's SBS Economics has made considerable concessions to the pluralistic opponents of mainstream economics. Confirming a paradigm shift in assessing the outcomes of higher education, the author critically examines the opposition scheme between Pluralism and Standardization around economics education. Further, he suggests the possibility of developing undergraduate-level economics education in the "universal stage" of higher education in the direction of resurgent general education (liberal arts study).
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Notes
SCJ (2014). Correctly in Japanese, Daigaku Kyoiku no Bunya-betsu Shitsu Hosho no tame no Kyoiku Katei Hensei-jo no Sansho Kijun, Keizai-gaku Bunya (Reference Standard for the Construction of Curriculum for the Subject-wise Quality Assurance of the University Education, Area of Economics).
SCJ made it a rule to hold an open symposium in each subject area to discuss the draft of the RS of the subject concerned.
The sub-committee approved (1) and (3) but rejected (2).
Japanese Economic Association, to which leading sub-committee members belonged, offered no message. However, its president Prof. Honda Yuzo supported the sub-committee draft at the SCJ's symposium.
In Generic Skills, AHELO-FS used CLA (Collegiate Learning Assessment) developed by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) with some modifications to apply to international comparison.
The documents related to the AHELO Main Study, including the referred correspondence, are retrievable from its home page on OECD’s site. (https://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/ahelo-main-study.htm. Accessed on May 16, 2023).
In this area, under the collaboration of ca 70 higher education institutions in nine countries, ca 6000 students took AHELO’s assessment test in economics. (OECD 2012a 130).
We cannot regard the economists of the Economic Experts Group of the AHELO-FS as belonging to mainstream neoclassical economics. Its Chair, Cecilia Conrad (Pomona College, U.S.), was one of the leaders of Feminist economics.
See https://icape.org/ (Accessed on May 16, 2023).
In the joint article (Bowles and Carlin 2020) that revealed their intentions to produce CORE’s online textbook The Economy, Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin opposed “pluralism by juxtaposition” and described their position as “pluralism by integration.” In their view, it integrates “the insights of differing schools of thoughts and knowledge from other disciplines into a coherent paradigm.” Still, the discontent of pluralists on CORE remains (Mearman et al. 2018b).
The statistics of the Basic School Survey 2022. (Retrievable from https://www.mext.go.jp/b-menu/toukei/chosa01/kihon/kekka/k_detail/1419581_00007.htm).
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The author acknowledges that he used a part of his old writing in Japanese (Yagi 2015, pp. 25–50, Tables 1 and 2) with considerable revisions under the permission of its publisher, Sakurai Shoten, Tokyo.
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Yagi, K. Dispute on the reference standard for economics in Japan and its international backgrounds: is pluralism vs. standardization an appropriate scheme in economics education?. Evolut Inst Econ Rev 21, 47–80 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-023-00263-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-023-00263-x
Keywords
- Economics education
- Above contents skill
- Subject-specific skills
- Generic skills
- Standardization
- Pluralism in economics