deductive logics are used extensively in both orthodox and radical approaches, positive movement toward a raceand gender-balanced economics requires opening the methodological door to the many alternatives available for constructing economic reality. Such an opening, however, is predicated on an understanding of how current practices exclude or marginalize the experiences of the majority. Economic science, especially in the dis, tilled version taught in undergraduate classes, has been dominated by a single theoretical voice which has been authoritatively defined as THE valid approach to economic questions. McCloskey (1983) identifies this voice as the economic variant of modernism in which all economic outcomes are ultimately traceable to the universal imperatives of individual choice. As argued in Feiner and Bruce Roberts (1990), a catholic application of this approach blocks the discussion of topics relating to race and gender in economics. In the classroom, economics professors whose emphasis on formal mathematical modeling and the neoclassical approach excludes consideration of alternative approaches create a false sense of security about the science underlying the discipline. In fact, questions need not be limited to mathematical modeling or the behavior of the rational economic man because alternatives do exist. The new scholarship enables students to ask more inclusive questions by expanding existing models and developing alternative models. This approach to methodology is grounded in and draws upon important critical discoveries in experimental and social sciences (Ruth Blier, 1986; Joyce McMarl Nielson, 1990). The social diversity it recognizes is mirrored by the diversity of methods employed for solving problems and addressing issues. By comparing Claudia Goldin's (1990) and Teresa L. Amott and Julie A. Matthaei's (1991) explanation of malefemale wage differentials, one can see how different methodological approaches affect both course content and cognitive achievement. Goldin couples the human-capital model with a traditional empirical approach to determine the reasons for the wage gap and its persistence. Amott and Matthaei couple a qualitative historical approach with an alternative feminist-Marxist model to determine the reasons for the wage gap and its persistence. Cecilia Conrad (1992) suggests that most economics classes would rely solely on a treatment like that found in Goldin. Such an exclusive emphasis is unwarranted, however, as it produces both an unbalanced view of the available economic approaches and an unbalanced view of contemporary controversies within economics. In comparing the paths of political and scientific change Thomas Kuhn (1970 p. 92) comments that: ... scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. When a growing number of economists recognize the likely connection between the curriculum's emphasis on economic orthodoxy and the failure of the profession to produce an adequate number of female and minority practitioners, then there will be a readiness to look at new approaches and paradigms. Convincing the mainstream to take up this task will be difficult; [w]hen paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense (Kuhn, 1970 p. 94 [emphasis added]). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Tue, 30 Aug 2016 04:18:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms VOL. 82 NO. 2 AL TERNA TIVE PEDAGOGIES AND ECONOMIC EDUCA TION 561 Both those who would include greater attention to race and gender variables and those who would either continue to exclude them from attention or else handle them in an orthodox manner argue from their cho-