A disaggregated investigation of learning functions in introductory economics

Few evaluations of specific curriculum decisions or teaching methods have investigated their potential impact on the learning performance of students with different characteristics. This paper attempts to address that void by estimating learning functions for different subgroups of students. To investigate the potential variations in student learning processes, a sample of freshmen economic students from a state university is disaggregated by the students' gender, previous knowledge of economics, attitudes toward economics and innate abilities as measured by ACT. ACT English and ACT Mathematics. Differences in the regression coefficients of the segmented samples are then tested using the Chow Test.