Page 186 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

158 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
emphasize the basic concepts, principles, and data-collection and analysis methods used in the discipline. Business groups would emphasize savings, investments, and knowledge and values related to the free market economy. Consumer advocates would emphasize critical thinking about advertising and good decision making about spending, credit, and other aspects of personal economics. These and other stakeholders have yet to agree on a single set of standards, let alone a complete economics curriculum.
The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE), an organization of economists and educators interested in economics education, developed a set of voluntary national standards for teaching economics as a discipline. Some of these standards deal with macro- economics and are better suited to instruction in high school (e.g., monetary and fiscal policy, unemployment and inflation, the role of government in regulating the national econ- omy), but others are appropriate for elementary students (e.g., scarcity, the role of incentives, specialization and trade, entrepreneurship, and profit). Elaboration of these standards, including definitions, related concepts, standards and benchmarks, and links to classroom- tested lessons can be accessed at NCEE’s website. The NCEE also sells curriculum guides and lesson plans targeted at the primary, intermediate, or upper grades, as well as a guide to teaching economics using children’s literature. The lesson plans available through NCEE’s website have been field tested by teachers at the target grade levels and revised over the years. Other web-based sources of economics lessons for the elementary grades include the Indiana Council for Economic Education site (www.econed-in.org/) and the economic education site at James Madison University (www.williamcwood.com/econed/).
Economics standards also appear in the NCSS (2010) Curriculum Standards. One of the 10 themes calls for experiences that provide for the study of how people organize for the Production, Distribution, and Consumption of goods and services. In the early grades, such experiences allow students to give examples that show how scarcity and choice gov- ern our economic decisions; distinguish between needs and wants; identify examples of private and public goods and services; give examples of the various institutions that make up economic systems such as families, workers, banks, labor unions, government agencies, small businesses, and large corporations; describe how we depend upon work- ers with specialized jobs and the ways in which they contribute to the production and exchange of goods and services; describe the influence of incentives, values, traditions, and habits on economic decisions; explain and demonstrate the role of money in every- day life; describe the relationship of price to supply and demand; use economic concepts such as supply, demand, and price to help explain events in the community and nation; and apply knowledge of economic concepts in developing a response to current local economic issues, such as how to reduce the flow of trash into a rapidly filling landfill. In the middle grades, activities relating to this strand allow students to explain examples of ways that economic systems structure choices about how goods and services are to be produced and distributed; describe the role that supply and demand, prices, incentives, and profits play in determining what is produced and distributed in a competitive mar- ket system; explain the difference between private and public goods and services; describe a range of examples of the various institutions that make up economic systems such as households, business firms, banks, government agencies, labor unions, and cor- porations; describe the role of specialization and exchange in the economic process; explain and illustrate how values and beliefs influence different economic systems; differ- entiate among various forms of exchange and money; compare basic economic systems according to who determines what is produced, distributed, and consumed; use eco- nomic concepts to help explain historical and current developments and issues in local, national, or global contexts; and use economic reasoning to compare different proposals for dealing with a contemporary social issue such as unemployment, acid rain, or high- quality education.
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