Skip to main content

Overall Approach

The "Tacked On" Challenge:

  • Traditional curricula add peace/conflict content as a final unit in Unit Four
  • Students perceive this as a separate topic requiring distinct knowledge
  • Creates disconnect between core economic theory and real-world applications
  • Undermines curricular coherence and student understanding

Student Experience:

  • "Why are we suddenly talking about conflict?"
  • "What does this have to do with the economics we've been learning?"
  • Peace content feels like an afterthought rather than an integral application

Overall Curriculum Philiosophy: Narrative Integration Throughout the Course​

Core Principle: Peace and conflict serve as real-world contexts illustrating why economic concepts matter.

What This Is:

  • Fundamentally an economics course that uses peace and conflict as contextual examples throughout all units
  • Demonstrates connections between economic systems and societal outcomes
  • Designed with these ideas from the begginning.

What This Is Not:

  • Adding a separate "peace economics" unit
  • Teaching peace studies alongside economics
  • Requiring students to learn entirely new frameworks
  • Replacing economic content with peace content