Teaching and Learning The Embedded Economy

For many years there has been a debate about economics education and how it needs to be reformed to make students better equipped to address sustainability issues.

Calls have intensified for economics education to adopt new models embedding the economy within society and the biosphere.

With this background, the purpose of this project is to develop knowledge about what role “The Embedded Economy”-model can have for students’ learning about ecological and social dimensions of the economy.

The project will include case studies in Sweden and Belgium with four teachers testing, evaluating and redesigning lesson plans together with the researchers. Lesson plans developed by Doughnut Economics Action Lab will be used as a starting point.

The case studies will generate empirical material in the form of video-recorded lessons capturing teachers and students talking about sustainability issues when using the model in classroom practice. A transactional methodology will be used to analyse the empirical material.

This facilitates analysis of what students learn when using the model in classroom practice, and  which kind of teacher interventions that have a positive effect on students´ learning environment and their use of the model.

As such, the project aims to deepen the empirical foundation for teaching economics in ways that enable students to grasp the complex and dynamic relationships between economic, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability.