Promoting Inclusivity and Diversity in Economics: Insights, Strategies, and Recommendations

Holistic Approach

Stefania stresses to consider not only “what you teach” but also “how we teach because that's going to help us reach more students”. Otherwise, “you're going to be talking to the usual minority of students or the usual group of students”. She suggests that we need to think more “holistically” about interdisciplinarity, from our journey to our pedagogy to how we engage and connect with students.

Lessons from the Pandemic

The pandemic made Stefania realise that “we care much more about accessibility of material than we have ever cared in the past”. Furthermore, before the pandemic, there were instances where students stopped attending live lectures. The pandemic prompted the question, “how can we engage more with students…” In the online environment, “we care much more about student engagement with the material”, which also opened opportunities to co-create materials with colleagues. Creating online learning material encouraged conversations about “what other colleagues in other departments were doing” to engage students, fostering a “share of common practice”.

Coordination Challenges in Embedding Interdisciplinarity

Stefania believes that embedding interdisciplinarity within education faces the challenge of a lack of coordination among departments to discuss how subjects are taught, or to share best practices, or explore teaching topics in ways that will allow students to see them from different disciplines. Improved coordination between departments would facilitate cross-learning and encourage interdisciplinarity. She identifies that “perhaps IATL is one of the places where you can do that”. To incorporate interdisciplinarity within a department, it is essential to “go outside your department”, which becomes challenging when bringing in someone from another department.

Stefania found that looking outside her discipline and examining effective practices in other departments was “really helpful to design my teaching, redesign assessments and to think of myself not just as an economist trying to teach economics, but as an economics educator trying to educate to economists for the future”.

Overcoming Student Resistance to Interdisciplinarity

Some students might “reject” interdisciplinary approaches, questioning why they need to learn concepts from other disciplines to understand their own field. Stefania stresses the importance of taking students “through the process” of exploring topics from different perspectives. It is necessary to “explain why it’s relevant to them as an economist to engage” with other disciplines.

To incorporate interdisciplinarity within her practice, Stefania “started moving away from mostly economic conversations on what we teach” and began reimagining the pedagogy of economics courses and “looking at the broader literature” on inclusive practice in education to engage with students from diverse backgrounds and help them see economic topics from multiple lenses to increase engagement with the discipline.

Think Long Term

Stefania also suggests thinking long-term about which aspects of interdisciplinarity to introduce. Introducing interdisciplinarity in your course “doesn't mean adding some papers”. Instead, consider why and how that paper will help you or the students “become a better economist or a better political scientist”. She emphasises thinking about “why you are doing these things and which aspects of interdisciplinarity will be easy for you to include” and “more appealing to students so that they feel they learned more about it.”