ABSTRACT
For many high school social studies teachers, being assigned to teach economics is like a bad dream come true. Add in the financial meltdown of 2008-2009, and it only gets worse. Teachers who have majored in history or political science generally expect to be assigned to teach these subjects because they are their areas of expertise. They are often surprised to be assigned to teach economics and to find out that they are considered qualified to do so. Although many social science teachers feel comfortable teaching a variety of courses such as geography, world history, and U.S. history and government, the subject matter of economics often does not fall into this comfort zone. As bad as an economics teaching assignment might seem to a social studies teacher in normal times, recent times have been anything but normal. The U.S. economy suffered through its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. “What to teach” might seem unclear, as a 1990s consensus about the economy as a whole unraveled (Niederjohn and Wood, 2009). Even in the best of times, economics is perceived as being abstract, difficult, mathematical, and irrelevant-in short, the dismal science.1
