Teachers’ perceptions of financial literacy and the implications for professional learning

• Description of the programme
• The study
• Key findings
• Points to consider

Description of the programme

The consequences of recent global economic issues have highlighted the importance of including financial literacy in the school curriculum from an early age. Recognising this, the Australian Government has invested significantly into initiatives that intend to help children understand finance. Within the curriculum, the most explicit opportunities for teaching students about money are within the areas of mathematics and economics and business. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) is leading the work in Australia to help children improve their understanding of Finance. Central to ASIC’s activities has been establishing the ‘MoneySmart’ brand, which is a ‘one stop’ website for money-related matters. The website has a dedicated section for schools and teachers, and provides financial education resources and tools. However, the MoneySmart brand has been criticised, particularly in that it does not integrate with pedagogical approaches to teaching financial literacy. To increase the evidence base on how best to support teachers, this study aimed to explore 35 practising teachers’ perceptions of the opportunities for financial literacy teaching and learning. It also aimed to identify how confident teachers feel in educating students about financial literacy. The teachers came from 16 schools in the Victoria region of Australia. The study examined teachers’ perceptions before and after they delivered ten challenging mathematics tasks (of which five were financial dilemmas).

The study

Researchers from Monash University conducted the study. The study employed a pre- and post-intervention survey design. The researchers invited teacher participants to two workshops. The first workshop aimed to gather pre-intervention survey data, as well as to prepare the teachers to teach the ten mathematics tasks. The researchers held the second workshop four months later, to capture follow-up (post-intervention) survey data as well as focus group data. They also explored with the teachers how the findings of the project might guide, inform and enhance mathematics and financial literacy teaching and learning.

Key findings

Views on teaching financial literacy pre-intervention:

Before the intervention, teachers had varied views about what financial literacy teaching might involve, as well as in their self-assessment of their capacity to teach financial literacy.

• More than 40% of the participants did not think that financial literacy was a specialised topic that deserved its own time in the curriculum.
• More than 80% were unsure or disagreed that financial literacy is best taught using purpose-designed published programmes.
• Over a third (38%) agreed that external organisations or guest speakers have a role to play in financial literacy teaching.
• More than 75% agreed that they were financially literate, but only half indicated being confident about teaching financial literacy.

Views on teaching financial literacy post-intervention:

• Overall the post-intervention survey highlighted that the financial dilemmas and their associated pedagogies benefitted both teachers and their students, that there were particular considerations for effective financial literacy lessons, and that teachers were willing to learn about – and experiment with – new tasks and pedagogies through research-based professional learning.
• Around half of the teacher participants agreed that their students seemed to know more about using money than they had realised.
• More than 90% of teachers agreed that the tasks they learned through the intervention helped them to feel more confident about teaching financial literacy. This is 40 percentage points higher than pre-intervention.
• Over 90% said they would use the same tasks and methods again, suggesting that many teachers had changed their views about using purpose-designed programmes for teaching financial literacy.
• The study also found that teachers found it difficult to teach three types of skills relating to financial literacy: finding multiple options, comparing and contrasting different options, and developing an argument based on social and

Points to consider

• Generalisability/ transferability: The sample size was small (n=35) and teachers were based in one region of Australia (Victoria), so the findings cannot be generalised to the wider population of teachers in Australia and beyond.