Juan Pablo Castilla, María Pía Nieto and Paula Jaramillo are part of the TREES (Teaching and Research Equitable Economics from the Global South) initiative at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. Together, they are developing new teaching resources that help economists strengthen their ethical and critical thinking skills. CORE’s The Economy has been a key text in the development of their new resources.
We spoke with Juan Pablo, María Pía and Paula to find out more about their project. Their goal is to make ethical and critical thinking in economics a shared concern and to connect with others exploring or wishing to explore this topic. If you’re curious, read on—you’ll find contact details at the end.
For readers unfamiliar with TREES, could you tell us a bit about it?
Paula: TREES’ mission is to research, teach, and share knowledge to transform economics as both a discipline and a lived reality. We work through three main areas: Research, Teaching, and Outreach, each led by a dedicated team. Our teaching efforts have focused on Latin America so far, but our reach is naturally expanding worldwide.
Juan Pablo: Within the Teaching area, we focus on three strategies. First, we promote equity through specialised courses at Universidad de los Andes and design curricula and materials that other institutions can use, from universities to senior-year high school programs. One example is our Global South Course on the Political Economy of Inequality, co-created with six institutions in Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, India, South Africa, and Colombia.
Second, we create and share pedagogical resources that help students and educators develop competencies for analysing complex economic problems.
Finally, we lead a community of practice for educators in Latin America, most of them based in Colombia. One of our flagship initiatives is an annual participatory action-research program where student teams investigate classism or related social issues in their own communities.
How did you discover CORE?
Paula: Juan Camilo Cárdenas has collaborated with CORE for many years and often spoke about its strengths, especially for teaching younger students. What impressed me most was CORE’s real-world-first approach. Instead of starting with a model and then explaining why it doesn’t fit reality, you start with what you observe in the world and then build a model to explain it.
What led to your interest in ethical and critical thinking?
María Pía: Economics has long emphasized critical thinking, but as Sam Bowles says, it often treats economics as a “morals-free” zone. We want to highlight ethical thinking too.
I reviewed both economists’ perspectives and philosophical work in critical and ethical thinking, then combined them—less abstract than pure philosophy, but more process-oriented than most economic discussions.
How did you define each concept?
Juan Pablo: Critical thinking is the ability to analyze, reflect, and argue rigorously when facing complex issues. It means breaking information into clear parts (analyze), questioning assumptions and multiple perspectives (reflect), and building evidence-based arguments (argue) to reach well-founded conclusions.
María Pía: Ethical thinking is the ability to identify the actors, values, and possible consequences in a situation, weigh them against moral principles, and reason toward a justified course of action.
Although we separated the two terms for practicality, we see them as interdependent. Rigorous analysis should lead to ethical action, and strong ethical commitments need critical justification. Together, they form a single, holistic competence.
Paula: It’s important to note these are working definitions. We’d love to collaborate with people interested in refining them—especially those experienced in defining or assessing these competencies—but all perspectives are welcome.
What do you think about CORE’s approach to these topics?
Juan Pablo: When we reread CORE, we found many strengths and opportunities to make ethical and critical thinking more explicit in individual units. CORE already includes diverse voices and encourages reflection, but clearer cues for ethical and critical reasoning could make the learning experience even richer.
From here I understand you began to develop some exercises that built on CORE’s resources.
María Pía: Yes. Students often read individual chapters as stand-alone units, so we looked for ways to make ethical reflection more visible. CORE is a huge improvement over orthodox textbooks, but ethical questions can remain implicit. For example, a chapter that uses a slavery counterfactual to analyze British development encourages economic reasoning, but the ethical dimension could be more explicit.
We drafted short add-on prompts and exercises—two of each—to bring ethical analysis forward while using CORE’s strengths. After discussions with Wendy Carlin and Sam Bowles, we developed even more ideas.
Juan Pablo: We’re also mapping places where Experiencing Economics and Doing Economics activities can reinforce ethical and critical thinking. We already have a Spanish-language resource designed by Juan Camilo Cárdenas that uses classroom experiments to spark reflection on social and environmental justice.
What challenges have you faced?
Paula: Teaching inequality is difficult because it touches identity—gender, class, origin—and professors hesitate to start conversations they can’t fully control. It’s also easier to stick to content than to competencies. CORE’s global reach offers a great opportunity to support teachers to try these conversations, with concrete classroom experiences and guidance on how to manage them. Our add-ons align closely with CORE’s broader mission.
Who are you hoping to join the project?
Juan Pablo: The work benefits from diverse viewpoints, disciplines, and experiences. We’re building a diverse working group of instructors who want to co-develop modules, activities, and case studies that complement CORE’s materials with equity-focused ethical and critical thinking.
Paula: Anyone with ideas to contribute is welcome to reach out.
If you teach economics or related fields and would like to collaborate, test materials with your students, or co-author teaching notes, contact the team at [email protected].
Many thanks to Juan Pablo, María Pía, and Paula for sharing their insights. We look forward to following the progress of their ethical and critical thinking resources. Don’t hesitate to reach out to Juan Pablo at the email above if you’d like to learn more.
Useful links:
TREES
TREES Resource Bank (mostly in Spanish)
TREES Workshop on Göran Therborn’s The Killing Fields of Inequality (English)
