Comparing the Impact of Historical Narratives Versus Expository Texts on High School Students’ Macroeconomic Understandings
Karisma Sarkar
21/07/2026
Despite the critical role of macroeconomic literacy in financial decision-making, high school students often struggle with “hyper-rational” economic lessons that feel disconnected from real-world contexts. While narratives, theoretically, are more engaging and thus more effective in helping students understand complex content, their specific efficacy in teaching macroeconomic concepts like inflation in secondary school populations remains under-researched. This study investigated the comparative impact of a historical narrative versus an expository text on 10th-grade students’ knowledge acquisition, reasoning ability, confidence, and engagement regarding the effects of inflation as it relates to money supply. Utilizing a mixed-methods experimental between-subjects design, 141 students from a California public high school were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a historical narrative stimulus (Roman Empire hyperinflation), an expository text stimulus, or a no-stimulus control group. Participants completed a validated assessment measuring knowledge, reasoning, and confidence levels. Prior knowledge was also collected; a Welch’s ANOVA test revealed that it did not differ significantly between groups. Results from Welch’s ANOVA and Games-Howell post-hoc tests indicated that the historical narrative group achieved significantly higher overall scores and knowledge scores compared to the control group, while the expository group did not. Notably, the narrative group also demonstrated the highest level of engagement, with 84.9% of total possible participation in optional open-ended “explain your answer” questions, significantly outperforming the control group and the expository group (p < .001). While reasoning scores did not reach statistical significance, confidence analysis showed that for certain reasoning questions, the narrative stimulus significantly reduced student uncertainty in decision-making.