Based on Young's notion of powerful knowledge, acquiring disciplinary knowledge emerging from an economic epistemic community is expected to make an important difference for people when dealing with economic issues in their daily lives. In this regard, this article's author asked Swedish scholars of economics at higher education institutions what they considered to be the most important economic concepts that people would need to acquire and understand. The article provides knowledge about the case of Sweden as a contribution to existing research. Although the article does not suggest a list of key concepts, the results clearly bear close similarities to the economic concepts proposed within the framework of threshold concepts. These concepts is one important resource to be considered when deciding on what economic content students should have access to in school enabling them to face economic issues in their private and public lives.

Purpose: This article examines the prevalence of six economic terms in 17 Swedish upper-secondary school textbooks and how the language shifts between everyday and scientific language. Variations regarding content in the textbooks used in vocational programmes and preparatory programmes for higher education are also investigated. Design: Powerful knowledge (important knowledge within a subject) and semantic waves (variations between everyday and scientific language) are essential to cumulative knowledge building. These theories are used for quantitative and qualitative analyses of the textbooks. Findings: There are variations in the extent to which powerful economic terms appear and how the language shifts between everyday and scientific discourses in the textbooks analysed. Coverage and shifts are generally insufficient in textbooks used in vocational programmes. Practical implications: The importance of using powerful economic knowledge and shifting between everyday and scientific language in textbooks and teaching should be highlighted for policymakers, textbook authors and teacher educators. 

The focus of this article is on how civics/social studies student teachers develop in their ability of transforming theoretical knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). It does so by exploring how the student teachers transform economic theory into teaching economics to pupils in primary, secondary, and upper secondary education. The study draws its findings and conclusions on qualitative in-depth interviews with four student teachers in civics/social studies. The main conclusions are that the student teachers develop PCK like a process depending on theoretical and practical studies, and that they develop both didactical skills and knowledge that influence their teaching. However the study also shows that the student teachers’ individual PCK are rather weakly developed after taking the courses. One further conclusion is that the topic of economics is perceived to be difficult to teach, however the ‘difficulty’, lies within the many concepts used and how these are interrelated with each other. As a result of these findings the article discusses the role of using threshold concepts in the context of teaching and learning economics.