Sebastian Brückner

Effects of prior economic education, native language, and gender on economic knowledge of first-year students in higher education. A comparative study between Germany and the USA

The assessment of university students’ economic knowledge has become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Particularly, the different influences of prior education, native language, and gender as some of the main prerequisites on students’ economic knowledge have been highlighted since long. However, the findings are often only available within countries and focus on students who are at different levels of their studies or graduates. To remedy this research deficit, the goal of our article is to analyze the status of economic knowledge of students at the beginning of their course of studies and compare the effects of prior economic education, gender, and native language between the USA and Germany. Therefore, we used a translated and adapted version of the fourth edition of the Council for Economic Educations Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE). The TUCE is an international measuring instrument that has been validated and widely been used in several countries to assess the economic knowledge of students in higher education. Since the curricular structure as well as higher education studies/programs in both countries is quite comparable, no tremendous general between-country effect has been expected. But as our results show, if micro- and macroeconomics are analyzed separately, divergent effects on the students’ economic knowledge were detected showing that prior education has a positive significant effect merely on micro test scores, while gender and native language are purely significant on macro test scores in both countries. In our conclusion, we discuss several reasons that might have caused these different effects.

Gender Effects in Assessment of Economic Knowledge and Understanding: Differences Among Undergraduate Business and Economics Students in Germany, Japan, and the United States

Gender effects in large-scale assessments have become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Yet few studies have linked differences in assessment results of male and female students in higher education to construct-relevant features of the target construct. This paper examines gender effects on students’ economic content knowledge with a focus on construct-relevant explanations. Moreover, we compare gender effects cross-nationally between Germany, Japan, and the United States. To assess economic content knowledge of higher education students, we used translated, adapted, and validated versions of the Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE, 4th ed.), an instrument that is commonly used internationally. We found gender effects on test scores in all three countries; effects were larger in Germany and the United States than in Japan. Gender effects were generally more pronounced on the numeracy subscale than on the literacy subscale, that is, male students had a greater edge over female students when items required calculations. In our conclusion, we discuss how numeracy and literacy items may tap different abilities.

Macroeconomic knowledge of higher education students in Germany and Japan – a multilevel analysis of contextual and personal effects

Recent trends towards harmonising and internationalising business and economics studies in higher education are affecting the structure and content of programmes and courses, and necessitate more transparent and comparable information on students’ economic knowledge and skills. In this study, we examine by linear multilevel regression modelling the current state of macroeconomic knowledge of higher education students in Germany and Japan, while controlling for the effects of key study-related aspects such as study progress and completion of economics courses. We assess macroeconomic knowledge using the internationally established Test of Understanding in College Economics, which has been adapted and validated for use in Germany and Japan. We found a significant positive correlation between students’ level of knowledge and study progress in both countries, as well as varied gender-related and country-specific differences. Implications for assessment practices and future research are discussed.

An Overview of Assessment Practices

On a global scale, attempts to specify conceptually academic learning outcomes have been made mostly in OECD countries. Definitions of learning outcomes can be used not only as an orientation for accrediting degree courses and universities; in some countries, they are used also as a basis for the development of assessment methods. The following will provide an overview of various key approaches and projects in this field.

Adapting and Validating the Collegiate Learning Assessment to Measure Generic Academic Skills of Students in Germany: Implications for International Assessment Studies in Higher Education

Starting in 2015, a German research team from the program Modeling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHs), in collaboration with the US Council for Aid to Education (CAE), adapted and validated the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) for the German language and cultural context to measure generic higher-order cognitive skills of university students and graduates in Germany. In this chapter, the conceptual and methodological background, the framework of the adaptation and validation study, as well as preliminary results are presented. Finally, findings are discussed critically, and future challenges and perspectives are explored.

Threshold Concepts for Modeling and Assessing Higher Education Students’ Understanding and Learning in Economics

In the last decade, the research carried out on threshold concepts as a content-based way to model students’ understanding and learning in several domains has increased. However, empirical evidence on this approach is still scarce. In this chapter, the authors investigate the adequacy of the threshold concepts approach in the domain of business and economics in higher education following an established differentiation between basic, discipline, and modeling thresholds. After conducting a cognitive interview study using verbal reports, a self-assessment questionnaire was used to assess the respondents’ familiarity with the content and their security to solve the tasks. Results indicate that there is a complex relation between students’ response processes, self-assessment, and test scores, which varies according to the different thresholds and that all three measures generally confirm our hypotheses yet have to be critically discussed. There are implications that test developers, test users, respondents, and other stakeholders should be aware of this complex relation; it affirms that the threshold concepts approach is at least a useful tool when conceptualizing and developing tests, which can be considered to be an addition to classic taxonomies of educational objectives.

Konstruktion, Implementation und Evaluation eines multimedialen Assessmenttools in der wirtschaftspädagogischen Ausbildung

Im Kontext der Outputorientierung im Bildungssystem gerat die Forderung handlungsbezogener Kompetenzen zunehmend in den Fokus der Lehrerausbildung und Forschung. Kompetenzorientierung verlangt nach einer Konvergenz von Curriculum, Instruktion und Assessment. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die curriculare Verankerung der Forderung handlungsbezogener Kompetenzen innerhalb der wirtschaftspadagogischen Studiengange und stellt ein innovatives Lehr- und Assessmentkonzept vor, das im instruktionalen Kontext auch als komplexes Assessmenttool zur gezielten Forderung solcher (bisher vernachlassigten) Kompetenzfacetten in der wirtschaftspadagogischen Ausbildung implementiert und evaluiert werden soll. Dabei werden insbesondere die, fur ein erfolgreiches Unterrichten im kaufmannischen-verwaltenden Bereich, erforderlichen aktionsbezogenen (AC) und reflexiven (RC) Kompetenzen mittels eines videobasierten Tools (mit Speedbedingungen und naturlichen Antwortformaten) fokussiert und mogliche Anwendungsbereiche kritisch diskutiert.

Demands in Higher Education

The field testing of the models and instruments at higher education institutions throughout Germany and the analyses of the data gathered on students’ competencies and their determinants pointed to a number of common challenges that institutions, policy-makers, practitioners, and students face with regard to different study phases of higher education today.

Development Perspectives for Higher Education Research and Practice

In the 24 collaborative projects of the KoKoHs program, comprising more than 70 individual research projects, objective test instruments were developed for assessing the competencies of students and graduates and tested in higher education practice (see table in section 8). The KoKoHs assessments provide empirically substantiated information on students’ competency levels and insight into the effectiveness of teaching-and-learning opportunities in higher education. KoKoHs has offered means to address major challenges of higher education in a more effective manner and, in the long term, contributed to improving structural, organizational, and individual conditions for teaching and learning at higher education institutions.

Competency Orientation in Higher Education

In recent years, higher education, particularly in Germany, has been marked by fundamental structural and programmatic changes after the implementation of the Bologna reform and the orientation towards competencies in the national standards for education, for instance, set forth by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs in Germany. The quality of academic education and its social returns have received increasing attention, and endeavors to develop and implement fair assessments of students’ learning outcomes have revealed diverse challenges. In Germany and internationally, it is becoming increasingly important to define and assess in an objective, reliable, and valid way students’ learning outcomes in higher education, for which suitable instruments are urgently needed.