Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
Journal homepage: www.isu.edu/peer/
Do Elementary Children Learn Economics from Children’s
Literature?1
Cynthia L. Hartera,2, John F. R. Harterb
a
b
Director, Center for Economic Education, Eastern Kentucky University, 521 Lancaster Avenue, Richmond, KY, United States
Department of Economics, Eastern Kentucky University, United States
Abstract
This study investigates the effectiveness of using children’s literature to teach economics to
students in fifth grade. The study includes a control group along with two test groups – one that
received a set of 13 children’s literature books and a list of economics concepts that could be
taught using those books and another test group that received the same set of 13 books along
with training in the Council for Economic Education’s (CEE) Teaching Economics Using Children’s
Literature curriculum and a copy of this curriculum. We use a difference-of-means test to show
that students of teachers who have been trained in the curriculum at a workshop do increase
performance on the Basic Economics Test more than students of teachers who were not trained
in the curriculum (whether they received the books or not). Random-effects regression analysis
supports these findings by showing that being in a class taught by a teacher in the workshop
group is a positive and significant predictor of students’ posttest scores. However, being in a class
where the teacher received only the literature books and no training in how to use them, yielded
results which were not significantly different from the students in the control group.
Key Words: economic education, assessment, literature, elementary education
JEL Codes: A21
1
This project was made possible by the Council for Economic Education through funding from the United States Department of
Education Office of Innovation and Improvement. We thank participants of the Council for Economic Education conference and
anonymous referees for many helpful suggestions. Any errors are ours.
2
Corresponding author.
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Harter and Harter/Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
1. Introduction
According to the Council for Economic Education’s 2014 Survey of the States, economics is, for the
first time, included in the educational standards of all 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia (Survey
of States, 2014). Many of these state departments of education include economics as required content
even for young children. In Kentucky, the Department of Education has set the academic expectation
that “students understand economic principles and are able to make economic decisions that have
consequences in daily living.” (KDE, 2007) In particular, elementary-aged students are expected to be
able to “recognize and apply fundamental economic concepts.” (KDE, 2007) We are testing whether
using children’s literature to teach economic concepts is an effective method of achieving those desired
results.
Literature can easily be used to teach economic concepts. For example, Watts (2003) shows how
economic concepts are often demonstrated in literature. Perhaps literature can be used to teach these
concepts better than the usual “chalk and talk” method does (Watts and Becker, 2008). Several authors
have shown how this can be done. Often, the examples given are for older students (Kish-Goodling,
1998; Vachris, 2007; and Ruder, 2010), for social studies, more generally (McCall, 2010), or both (Savage
and Savage, 1993). There has been some work on using children’s literature to teach economics to
elementary students (VanFossen, 2003, and Rodgers, Hawthorne, and Wheeler, 2007), but these are
concerned with how to do it. To the best of our knowledge, no one has examined whether or not using
literature actually works to improve the children’s understanding of economic issues. We focus on
elementary children and investigate the effectiveness of using literature to teach economics.
Informal, anecdotal evidence indicates that some teachers do not feel comfortable teaching
economic topics because they do not feel comfortable with their own level of knowledge of these topics.
Maybe that level of discomfort transfers to the students. On the other hand, elementary teachers, in
particular, seem to have a strong affinity for using children’s books. Perhaps children will learn more
economics if teachers can do what they enjoy and feel comfortable doing and still teach economics and
its application to daily decisions. In addition, with today’s crowded curriculum, this allows teachers to
combine economics with activities they may already be doing in reading and writing. It also provides an
avenue for teachers to meet requirements associated with the implementation of the Common Core
State Standards which have been adopted in forty-three states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S.
territories (Common Core, 2014). “Beginning in grade 6, the Common Core literacy standards allow
teachers of English language arts, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects to use their
content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking,
listening, and language in their respective fields” (Common Core, 2014). Using children’s literature to
teach economics in elementary grades will help prepare students to relate reading to content-specific
concepts which they will be asked to do more explicitly in later grades.
For our test of the effectiveness of using children’s literature to teach economic concepts, we test
fifth graders who are part of three different groups. In one group, the students’ teachers are using
Teaching Economics Using Children’s Literature, a curriculum published by the Council for Economic
Education (CEE), to teach a set of economic concepts derived from Kentucky’s Core Content. These
teachers attended a 3-hour workshop training them in using the curriculum and were given copies of the
curriculum and a set of 13 of the books covered in the curriculum. In the workshop, four specific books
(The Babe and I, Sign of the Beaver, My Rows and Piles of Coins, and Uncle Jed’s Barbershop) were
highlighted that best fit the core content fifth-grade teachers are expected to teach. A second group of
students have teachers who were not given the curriculum and did not attend training, but were given
the same set of 13 children’s books used in the curriculum and a list of economics concepts that could be
taught with those books. They were instructed to choose for themselves how to implement the books to
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Harter and Harter/Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
teach the concepts. A third group of teachers were not given the curriculum or books, did not attend
training, and were not asked to use children’s literature to teach the concepts. All of the participating
teachers were expected to teach the same concepts as outlined in Kentucky’s Core Content for
Assessment Version 4.1 (KDE, 2006). Data on student gender, race, and academic ability, as well as
teacher and class characteristics, are included as independent variables in determining the impact. The
hypothesis of this study is that using children’s literature will improve students’ economic literacy more
than the status quo methods. Also, using the particular curriculum, Teaching Economics Using Children’s
Literature, will yield more of an improvement in students’ economic literacy than not using that
curriculum. We expect this because teachers tell us they work best with a structured implementation
plan, and we have found this to be the case in other studies. For example, Harter and Harter (2009)
tested the effectiveness of the Financial Fitness for Life curriculum and found a gain in financial literacy
from using the curriculum. We have also studied the effectiveness of the Stock Market Game (SMG) and
found that playing SMG along with teaching general lessons from the Learning from the Market
curriculum improved student performance on a financial literacy assessment (Harter and Harter, 2010).
This study uses the same kind of econometric model used in the previous studies where the dependent
variable is students’ posttest scores and the independent variables include student characteristics such
as gender, general academic ability, and college plans. We also include teacher measures (as in Harter
and Harter, 2010) and also investigate teacher effects more explicitly using random-effects modeling in
this study. Another addition here is that we include a third teacher group (in addition to the traditional
control and test groups) which will use literature, but no specific curriculum, to examine if there is a
different impact. Others’ works (Swinton, Scafidi, and Woodard, 2010, and Swinton, DeBerry, Scafidi,
and Woodard, 2007) have shown that teacher training might aid student learning, and a second test
group which has not had specific training in the curriculum can help to see if any gains by the students
could be attributed to the use of literature or to the training and curriculum given to the teachers.
2. Methodology and analysis
Ideally, we would have a randomized study where teachers were randomly assigned to a treatment
or control group, but we have found it is not possible to carry out this type of study with volunteer
teachers. A priori, we do not know what motivates teachers to participate in this type of project. It could
be that teachers who are more motivated to teach well also are more likely to attend professional
development workshops and may seek out programs that offer material for the classroom and support
teaching efforts. Or, principals may require underperforming teachers to attend workshops in an attempt
to improve their classroom performance. In any case, these issues could introduce selection bias into our
model, but the direction of the bias is not certain and there is no reason to expect that teachers in the
different groups faced different types of choices.
We attracted teachers into three groups: two test groups and a control group. Many of the
teachers tested their students during spring, 2011, while the remainder tested their students during the
fall, 2011, semester or early in the spring, 2012, semester. The student participants completed a pretest,
a posttest, a demographic survey, and an assessment of mathematics ability as a proxy for general
academic ability.
We offered three workshops on Teaching Economics Using Children’s Literature, a curriculum
designed to use children’s literature to teach basic economic concepts to elementary-aged children – one
in December, 2010, one in February, 2011, and a final one in August, 2011. The in-service, fifth-grade
teachers who participated in the first two workshops were asked to join the study in one test group. The
third workshop was offered after the student testing was completed so that all of the participating
teachers had the opportunity to obtain training and resources.
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Harter and Harter/Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
The teachers in the first test group were required to teach a set of economic concepts using the
curriculum with their students in the spring or fall of 2011. To help them, we gave the teachers the
curriculum and a set of 13 children’s books, and we highlighted books that best fit the teachers’ core
content. Based on available funding, we were aiming for 15 teachers in this group. We had 16 that
participated, but one of the teachers did not complete all of the required assessments and surveys with
the students. So, we ended with 15 teachers who completed participation in this group. To elicit
participation, we offered stipends of $150 to the teachers who participated completely in this group. We
will call this the Workshop group.
Other studies have shown an increase in student test scores from some teaching method, but it is
not always clear if the resulting gain is from the method or the particular curriculum used. It is possible
that any gain in the students’ economic understanding here would be due to the curriculum and training
specifically, and not so much the concept of teaching economics using children’s literature. To control for
that, we asked a group of fifth-grade teachers to teach the economic concepts, but without the
curriculum. These teachers were given the set of children’s books and a list of concepts covered in those
books (obtained from the Teaching Economics Using Children’s Literature curriculum) and asked to use
them to teach at least some of the concepts on the list. Again, based on funding, we were aiming for 15
teachers in this group. We had 19 that participated, but six of the teachers did not complete all of the
requirements. So, we ended with 13 teachers who completed participation in the group. To elicit
participation, we offered stipends of $100 and then provided the curriculum and free training after they
completed their part of the study. We will call this the Books-Only group.
As a Control group, we sought out a set of 10 fifth-grade teachers to test their students. These
teachers taught the same concepts from the core content, but without the curriculum or children’s
books. We had 10 teachers who participated, but one did not finish all of the requirements and one was
omitted from the study because she taught an accelerated class that was sufficiently different from the
other participants that we were not able to include the class.3 Therefore, we ended with eight teachers
who completed participation in the group. These teachers were provided with the curriculum, books,
training, and a stipend of $100 for their participation after they had completed their part of the study.
We collected most of the data used in our study directly from the participants. The students in
both test groups and the Control group were given an online pretest and posttest using an online
assessment system developed by the Kentucky Council on Economic Education. We used the Basic
Economics Test from the Council for Economic Education for this assessment (Walstad and Robson,
1990). This is a general test of economic knowledge geared toward the upper-elementary level, and it is
not correlated to any specific curriculum, including Teaching Economics Using Children’s Literature.
Much of the data (such as gender and college plans) were obtained directly from the students through an
online survey. Teachers also gave students an online standardized test to measure mathematical ability
as a proxy for general academic ability. These questions were taken from a sample online version of the
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
We gave the teachers an online pretest to gain information about the teachers’ knowledge. We
used the CEE’s Test of Economic Knowledge for this (Walstad and Soper, 1987). We also surveyed the
teachers to elicit data on interest in economic topics in order to control for teacher attitudes towards
economics. For this, we used Soper and Walstad’s Survey of Economic Attitudes (1983).
3
Including the accelerated class caused math scores and pretest scores for the Control group to be significantly higher than
those scores for the other groups. Interestingly, differences in average posttest scores were not significantly different between
the Control group and either of the other groups. Therefore, we omitted this outlier.
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3. Results
After omitting the one accelerated class and classes that did not complete all of the requirements,
thirty-six fifth-grade teachers completed the activities. There are fifteen in the Workshop group, thirteen
in the Books-Only group, and eight in the Control group. Descriptive data are reported in Table 1. The
teachers are all white and mostly women. About one-third of the teachers are under 35, and while they
have an average of 13 years of teaching experience, they have an average of fewer than six years of
experience in teaching economics. The average pretest score (on the Test of Economic Knowledge) for all
of the teachers is 73.36%. While not shown in the table, when the teachers are separated into treatment
groups, the average pretest scores are as follows: Workshop Group average is 71.11%, Books-Only group
average is 71.79%, and the Control group average is 80.13%. Besides higher scores on the content test,
teachers in the Control group also had earned more graduate credits in economics, on average
(Workshop: 0.6 credits; Books-Only: 1.0 credits; Control: 1.875 credits).
Table 1: Descriptive Results for Teachers
Variable
Workshop
Number of
Observations
36
Female
Variable Description
Dummy Variable = 1 if teacher was trained in Teaching
Economics Using Children’s Literature curriculum during study
Dummy Variable = 1 if teacher received literature books
without curriculum and training
Dummy Variable = 1 if teacher was member of Control Group
and did not attend a workshop or receive books
Dummy Variable = 1 if teacher is female
White
Dummy Variable = 1 if teacher is White
36
Under35
Dummy Variable = 1 if teacher is under 35 years old
36
Experience
Average years of teaching experience prior to 2010-11
academic year
Average years of experience teaching economics concepts
prior to 2010-11 academic year
Number of workshops, trainings, seminars, etc. attended to
learn about financial and/or economic topics
Credit-hours of graduate instruction completed in financial
and/or economic topics
Approximate number of hours of class time spent on financial
or economic concepts during the class
Average response on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5
(strongly agree) on questions where more agreement reveals a
positive attitude toward economics
Average response on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5
(strongly agree) on questions where more agreement reveals a
negative attitude toward economics
Teacher’s score on TEK Pretest
36
Books-Only
Control Group
EconExper
Workshops
Credits
ContentHours
Good Attitude
Bad Attitude
Pretest Score
36
36
36
35
36
36
36
36
Mean
0.44
(0.50)
0.36
(0.49)
0.22
(0.42)
0.97
(0.17)
1.00
(0.00)
0.31
(0.47)
13.11
(9.82)
5.23
(5.16)
2.19
(2.53)
1.03
(2.26)
9.98
(5.32)
3.32
(0.56)
36
1.94
(0.45)
36
73.36
(11.11)
There are 1,192 students with 582 students of teachers who were in the Workshop group, 402
students of teachers who were in the Books-Only group, and 208 students of teachers in the Control
group. Descriptive statistics for these students are provided in Table 2. One-half of the students are
female and one-half are male while most are white. More than one-half live with both parents. Nearly
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Harter and Harter/Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
two-thirds have mothers that either graduated college or earned a graduate degree while just over onehalf have fathers that either graduated college or earned a graduate degree. Nearly all (90%) of the
students reported that they probably or definitely will attend college. About 60% of the students agree
or strongly agree that they enjoy learning about economics, and only 14% of the students agree or
strongly agree that studying economics is a waste of time. When looking at the demographic statistics for
students in each of the teacher groups (Workshop, Books-Only, Control), there are no notable
differences.
Table 2: Descriptive Results for Fifth-Grade Students
Variable
Gender
Variable Description
Dummy Variable = 1 if student is female and 0 if student is male
White
Dummy Variable = 1 if student is white and 0 if student is another
race
Dummy Variable = 1 if student reports living with both parents most
of the time
Dummy Variable = 1 if student reports that his/her mother
graduated college or earned a graduate degree
Dummy Variable = 1 if student reports that his/her father graduated
college or earned a graduate degree
Dummy Variable = 1 if student reports that he/she probably or
definitely will attend college
Dummy Variable = 1 if student agrees or strongly agrees with
statement: I enjoy learning about economics.
Dummy Variable = 1 if student agrees or strongly agrees with
statement: Studying economics is a waste of time.
Both
MomCollege
DadCollege
CollegePlan
Enjoy
WasteTime
Number of
Observations
998
999
999
645
606
999
993
997
Mean
0.50
(0.50)
0.84
(0.36)
0.62
(0.49)
0.64
(0.48)
0.54
(0.50)
0.90
(0.30)
0.61
(0.49)
0.14
(0.35)
The average test scores for the students are shown in Table 3. Totals for the entire set are
provided, and the students are also divided according to which group their teachers were in. Looking at
the first row of results, we observe that the average posttest score of 58.01 is higher than the average
pretest score of 47.62. A simple difference-of-means test with a t-statistic of 11.01 shows that this is a
statistically significant increase in student performance.
When we break the students into groups depending on the treatment group of the teacher, we see
that the students of teachers in the Control group have slightly higher scores on the math test and the
content pretest than students of teachers in either of the treatment groups. In using a difference-ofmeans statistical test to analyze the differences in averages between the groups, however, we found no
statistically significant differences between each of the treatment groups and the Control group.
Similarly, there are no statistically significant differences between the two treatment groups on the math
test and the content pretest.
The average scores on the content posttest are statistically significantly higher for the students
whose teachers attended the workshop than for students whose teachers were in either of the other
groups – the group that received just the books without curriculum and training and the Control group
that received no books, curriculum, or training. This is good news for providers of economic education
since it shows that the teachers who received the training and curriculum had students who performed
better after being taught economic concepts using the training and resources. The students of teachers
who received just the literature books without training or curriculum, on the other hand, fared no better
on the content posttest than students of teachers in the Control group.
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Harter and Harter/Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
Table 3: Test Results for Fifth-Grade Students
Math Test
(Std. Dev.)
[No. of Obs.]
50.95
(18.84)
[1101]
50.93
(18.18)
[547]
50.23
(19.76)
[352]
52.24
(18.97)
[202]
Content Pretest
(Std. Dev.)
[No. of Obs.]
47.62
(18.61)
[1048]
46.88
(18.09)
[512]
48.07
(19.83)
[341]
48.79
(17.73)
[195]
Content Posttest
(Std. Dev.)
[No. of Obs.]
58.01
(19.66)
[1027]
62.77
(18.52)
[497]
53.33
(19.81)
[346]
53.97
(19.43)
[184]
t-Statistic Comparing Means for Workshop
Group and Control Group
-0.51
-0.79
3.05
t-Statistic Comparing Means for Workshop
Group and Books-Only Group
0.37
-0.61
4.80
t-Statistic Comparing Means for Books-Only
Group and Control Group
-0.71
-0.27
-0.21
Teacher Group
All Combined
Workshop
Books-Only
Control
To investigate the gains in performance from the content pretest to the content posttest more
explicitly, we used the same difference-of-means test to determine whether differences in average gains
were statistically significant between the test groups and the Control group. As shown in Table 4, the
gain in performance for students with teachers in the Workshop group is statistically significant as
compared to gains in performance by students of teachers in either of the other groups. The average
gains in the Books-Only group were not statistically significantly different from the average gains in the
Control group. This is more evidence that curriculum-specific training and the use of literature is helpful
to teachers and students of economics.
Table 4: Gains in Performance for Fifth-Grade Students
Workshop
462
Books-Only
300
Control
175
t-Statistic Comparing Means for Workshop Group and
Control Group
t-Statistic Comparing Means for Books-Only Group and
Control Group
t-Statistic Comparing Means for Workshop Group and
Books-Only Group
na
Average Gain Measure
by Posttest-Pretest
10.88
(14.53)
15.61
(15.36)
6.84
(12.52)
5.32
(11.13)
6.39
na
1.06
na
7.09
Teacher Group
All Combined
Number of
Students
937
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3.1 Regression Analysis
To further analyze the effects of curriculum and training on student assessment scores, we used
a random effects model. In this model, the dependent variable is student posttest score, and the
independent variables include student gender, whether student lives with both parents most of the time,
whether student reports that he will probably or definitely attend college, student scores on the math
multiple-choice test, and whether student was in a class where the teacher was in either the Workshop
group or the Books-Only group during the time period of the project (with the Control group being the
omitted group). We found that the variable describing students’ plans to attend college was highly
correlated with parents’ education levels while mothers’ and fathers’ educational attainment levels were
also highly correlated with each other. Also, students’ scores on the math test were highly correlated
with their BET pretest scores. This limited the inclusion of some of the variables. We also included the
number of graduate credits in economics and personal finance earned by the teachers since it has been
documented that more teachers’ graduate economics credits contributes positively to student
performance (Watts, 2006), a “good attitude” variable constructed from teacher responses to the Survey
of Economic Attitudes, teacher scores on the TEK pretest, and the number of hours teachers reported
spending on the content between the student pretest and posttest.
Since our data consists of classes of students where each class (or subgroup) has a different
teacher, panel data procedures similar to those used in Watts and Bosshardt (1991) can be used to
analyze these cross-sectional data. To investigate this, and especially the effect of participating in the
curriculum training and use, we use a random-effects model where there are two error terms – one
capturing an instructor’s effect on her or his students and the other being the typical error term related
to student differences.4 This model incorporates a teacher-specific random component, which is
assumed to be uncorrelated with the other variables in the model. To estimate this random-effects
model, as in Valletta, Hoff, and Lopus (2014), we used generalized least squares (GLS) and included
teacher-specific variables. Results are presented in Table 5.
We see a large, positive, and significant effect from the training and curriculum on student
posttest scores. In other words, training the teachers has an effect on the students. Also, we find
students’ academic ability as measured by performance on the math test, planning to go to college, and
living with both parents are positive and significant. Looking at the other teacher-specific variables, a
teacher with a positive attitude towards the subject has a positive and significant effect on student
posttest scores, while the teacher’s score on the TEK pretest is a negative and significant predictor of
student scores.
The model explains about 48% of the variation in posttest scores, and the Wald 2 statistic of
1031.37 with a p-value of 0.000 rejects the null hypothesis that all of the regression coefficients are equal
to zero. To test for appropriateness of using the random-effects model versus an OLS model, we used
the Lagrange multiplier test developed by Breusch and Pagan (1980). The test statistic of 103.34 with a
p-value of 0.000 is sufficiently large that we reject the null hypothesis that variances across teachers are
zero. In other words, there are significant differences in variance across groups, and the random-effects
model is appropriate.
4
We also used a fixed-effects model and found coefficient estimates very close to the random-effects model without including
teacher-specific variables. Since the fixed-effects model uses a dummy variable to represent each teacher, we are unable to
isolate effects of our training because participation in the teacher groups are teacher-specific variables so the model is not
appropriate for addressing this research question.
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Harter and Harter/Perspectives on Economic Education Research 9(1) 56-65
Table 5: Regression Results
Dependent Variable – BET Posttest
Variable
Math Score
Female
Live with Both Parents
Plans to Attend College
Teacher Attended TEUCL Workshop
Teacher Received Books Only
Teacher Graduate Credits in Economics
Teacher’s Positive Attitude toward Content
Teacher’s Score on TEK Pretest
Hours Spent on Content
Teacher’s Years of Experience
Constant
Coefficient
(t-statistic)
0.584
(23.64)**
-0.722
(-0.69)
2.683
(2.81)**
3.427
(1.95)*
6.275
(2.42)**
-0.146
(-0.08)
0.219
(0.62)
4.780
(2.34)**
-0.174
(-2.55)**
0.196
(0.95)
-0.072
(-0.50)
15.817
(2.12)**
n = 909
2
R = 0.48
2
 = 1031.37**
Notes: *p < .05; **p < .01
4. Conclusion
The results show that teaching economics using children’s literature does increase students’
knowledge of those topics in some cases. More specifically, providing training in a specific curriculum
and tying it to our state’s required core content seems to prepare teachers for teaching the content in
such a way that students perform better on the assessment afterwards. Just providing teachers with
literature and a list of concepts covered in those books did not have an impact on student scores.
In addition, teachers like using literature to teach economics and several of the study participants
have reported that they continue to use the curriculum and books even after the study ended. Not only
is the curriculum effective when used, but teachers seem to like using it. In particular, in combining
economics with reading, teachers can meet Common Core requirements while students learn practical
applications of the concepts. Providers of economic education can benefit from combining literature
with economics in order to get the economics into the classroom and meet important requirements.
Due to funding limits and logistics, we have a time frame that measures only short-term results
and, therefore, conclusions drawn from this project should be viewed with caution when generalizing
beyond this period of time and location. However, the findings do support efforts to integrate
economics at the elementary level and also point out a need for larger-scale studies of the effectiveness
of economic education training. This study particularly shows that using literature to teach economics at
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the elementary level does increase student knowledge of economics when combined with training and
an effective curriculum, and it likely has lasting effects because teachers are continuing to use the lessons
even after the specific time period of the study ended.
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