TRENDS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN ECONOMICS EDUCATION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The economic environment plays a fundamental role in the future welfare of individuals and how societies are shaped. Economic education provides an economic competence, which allows evaluative judgments on various aspects of economic activity. Economics teaching and learning performs a crucial role in this regard. Over the past two decades, there has been a relatively steady stream of post-graduate research conducted within the fields of social, environmental and economic resources within the South African context. Despite this research and the acknowledgement of it’s the relevance for pre-service and in-service teacher education, Economics Education research within a teacher education context is perceived as limited. The extent of this limitation is not known and is mostly assumed because of the discursive terrains of Economics Education and its links to the overarching multi-disciplinary Business Education. This research project maps the depth and breadth of the research conducted over the past twenty-one years (1994 to 2015) in order to establish the trends, potential gaps and areas for future research in Economics Education in South Africa. The research design follows a systematic review protocol: identifying relevant data sources, employing an effective search strategy, eliminating according to the eligibility criteria, and concludes with an analysis and discussion of preliminary results (204 words).