The Economics Network

Improving economics teaching and learning for over 20 years

Support for Teaching Assistants and New Lecturers

Are you new to teaching Economics in Higher Education? Then this page is aimed at you.

The Economics Network can offer you subject-specific information and support to complement the information, support and development opportunities available to you via your local Staff/Educational Development unit. Our support is free of charge.

Have you been to one of our training workshops? You may be able to access resources in our Moodle.

The Higher Education system in the UK

A separate briefing outlines the main features of the HE system that relate to economics.

Events

We run one day workshops for postgraduate teaching assistants and tutors in economics and two-day residential workshops for new and aspiring lecturers of economics.

Each delegate receives a certificate which maps the workshop activities and outcomes to the UK’s Professional Standards Framework. Example workshop programmes and certificates may assist institutions in determining how this subject-specific staff development complements institutional offerings:

For example, Nottingham and Warwick universities exempt economics lecturers who attend Economics Network New Lecturer workshops from parts of their own New Lecturer training.

We have also mapped our activities against the UK Professional Standards Framework to help staff following the individual recognition scheme, and to demonstrate how our other activities may complement institutional staff development.

Advice

Our Handbook for Economics Teaching Assistants gives practical tips for teaching classes, with examples and case studies from Economics.

The Handbook for Economics Lecturers includes chapters on seminar activities and groupwork that you may find useful.

Our Ideas Bank section includes many different case studies. We welcome your own case studies of things you have done in your teaching.

Teaching Tips for Teaching Assistants is an article by Christopher Nash with Steven Proud for Inomics Teach.

Diaries, case studies and articles

Personal reflections from a graduate teaching assistant, hosted on this site by kind permission.

The following case study was written by a graduate teaching assistant:

We also have a section for Lecturer Diaries written by new staff.

Reflections on Curriculum Development, Pedagogy and Assessment by a New Academic by Don Webber is an article in the International Review of Economics Education which also offers some interesting perspectives from a new member of staff.

Teaching online

We have a lot of resources about teaching at a distance, starting from the basics.

Resources

Geoff Petty, author of "Evidence Based Teaching", has released a sample chapter on classroom management and discipline.

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