Abstract
The present research aims at offering a new perspective at the way that modern Greek Lyceum operates. A great challenge that teachers are facing, within its’ framework, is to create the right conditions for active learning and to help students discover knowledge and its’ use in their everyday life. A first step towards that direction is to interconnect school subjects with real life and to create emotionally positive experiences both for students and for teachers. Moreover, in order to have an educational system that creates active citizens, we should help students a) understand the interrelationship of school subjects, b) realize the complexity of problems and the necessity of using concepts and ideas from different disciplines in order to solve them and c) acquire an holistic approach to knowledge. Consequently, there is a need for teaching approaches that can attain the abovementioned goals. Interdisciplinary approaches can be proved to be useful in this effort.The main goal of this ...
The present research aims at offering a new perspective at the way that modern Greek Lyceum operates. A great challenge that teachers are facing, within its’ framework, is to create the right conditions for active learning and to help students discover knowledge and its’ use in their everyday life. A first step towards that direction is to interconnect school subjects with real life and to create emotionally positive experiences both for students and for teachers. Moreover, in order to have an educational system that creates active citizens, we should help students a) understand the interrelationship of school subjects, b) realize the complexity of problems and the necessity of using concepts and ideas from different disciplines in order to solve them and c) acquire an holistic approach to knowledge. Consequently, there is a need for teaching approaches that can attain the abovementioned goals. Interdisciplinary approaches can be proved to be useful in this effort.The main goal of this research is to create a new broader framework for teaching Economics, adapted to the new standards and demands of Greek Lyceum. At the same time, it aims at interrelating the teaching of Economics with other school subjects in an interdisciplinary way that is directly connected to real life situations and can offer students the necessary stochastic and analytical instruments for facing and solving modern social problems.The specific objectives of the research are:To propose to Economics teachers a didactic approach that promotes active learning, students’ participation and correlates school knowledge with students’ real life knowledge, experiences and interests.To elaborate on methods that transform school courses into a pleasant procedure for students.To create teaching methods that can ameliorate students’ economic literacy.To create a Greek test that can be used in measuring students’ economic literacy.To highlight and clarify economic concepts, which are part of the Lyceum Curriculum and consequently underline the importance of the holistic approach to knowledge.The first part of the research was focused on the analysis of the interdisciplinary and the cross-thematic teaching approaches, in order to define their basic characteristics and to describe how they are applied in secondary education. Subsequently, are presented basic facts about the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) and its’ use in the secondary education. The aim of this part of the research is to create a test that can measure economic literacy in Greek Lyceum. The next part of the essay, reports on the creation of the Short Interdisciplinary Curriculum (SIC) that is used in the empirical part of the research. The basic steps in this procedure were a) to specify the economic concepts that are part of the curriculum and the text-book of the courses of Sociology and Political Education in Greek Lyceum, b) to review the possibility of using interdisciplinary approaches within the Greek Lyceum, c) to select the economic concepts and the abilities and skills that the SIC will promote, d) to design the SIC, e) to integrate the SIC in the school curriculum, f) to select the didactic methods and teaching instruments, g) to define the ways of students’ evaluation and h) to define the way of controlling the results of the implementation of the SIC.Subsequently the implementation and the evaluation of the SIC is presented. Although the results and conclusions were based on different quality and quantity measures, they cannot be generalized due to the fact that the students’ sample was rather small. Nevertheless, the empirical implementation of the SIC showed that there are indications that the SIC can contribute substantially in the attainment of the abovementioned goals and objectives.In the second part of the empirical implementation, the economic concepts in the curriculum of Sociology and Political Education courses were analyzed; in order to set the basis for further interdisciplinary approaches.
show more
