Janice Peterson

Pluralism and Economic Education: a Learning Theory Approach

Preparing students to participate in social and economic life after graduation is a widely held goal of economics instructors. How that goal is achieved and interpretations of what is a relevant skill, however, are a source of debate, covering both content coverage and pedagogical practices. This paper argues that a more pluralistic approach to both course content and pedagogy is fundamental for better preparing economics students for the world, and that learning theory is an integral component of understanding how to design practices to achieve desired outcomes.

Public Scholarship and Economics: Engaging Students in the Democratic Process

Public scholarship is an emerging pedagogical practice that integrates teaching, research, and service in ways that expand student learning by tackling critical, topical problems and generating real solutions. This paper describes the use of a course on women and the economy in two widely disparate institutions to demonstrate the process of integrating public scholarship in economics.

The Well-Being of Working Women in Times of Economic Crisis and Recovery: Insights from the Great Recession

The Great Recession drew new attention to the importance of gender in the U.S. economy. Popular analyses of the recession’s impacts emphasized the higher rates of job loss among men than women, leading some to rename the Great Recession the “Great Mancession.” With the onset of a weak recovery the “Mancession” gave way to a “Mancovery,” where unemployment rates increased for women as they declined for men. Recently, women’s employment has increased, but in types of work that give rise to questions of job quality and the future economic prospects of women workers. This chapter provides a broad overview of the impacts of the Great Recession on the well-being of women workers in the United States, blending discussions of descriptive statistics with influential interpretative narratives of the recession’s impacts. Insights from emerging feminist economic analyses of the Great Recession and the well-being of women workers provide a framework for examining the changing positions of women in the recovery and developing questions for future research.

Unemployment Insurance Reform: Elements of a Social Provisioning Approach

Abstract Unemployment Insurance (UI) has played an important role in efforts to provide economic security for American workers for over 70 years. Analysts from across the political spectrum, however, argue that the UI system has not kept up with the needs of the changing economy and workforce, and reforms are needed to modernize the system. This article examines recent UI reform proposals that seek to enhance the program’s “social provisioning” function — that is, to increase the ability of different groups of unemployed workers to receive UI benefits and improve the UI system’s provisions for the long-term unemployed.