Tony Lawson on Critical Realism: What’s Teaching Got to Do with It?
Author(s)
Emami, Zohreh; Riordan, Timothy
Abstract
Author Tony Lawson, in his book ‘Economics and Reality,’ discusses critical realism and its implications for teaching. His primary concern with the book is challenging the community of economists to solve the difficulties posed by the relationship between the reality of things and being vigilant about the limits of particular views of reality people develop and encounter. As the title of this article implies, our primary focus in exploring the ideas proposed by Tony Lawson is the relationship between his perspective and teaching. In a sense, then, this article is not only about Lawson’s work and our reflections on it, but also serves as an example of a relatively new, but potentially powerful form of scholarship. The article represents how the study of our fields and reflection on our teaching are integrally related. More specifically, our interest in this article is not so much in how we would teach Lawson’s ideas to our students, although that could be one way of thinking about his work, but in how his ideas might inform the way we as teachers engage our students in the practice of our disciplines.
