Cultivating financial literacy through secondary school economics education : access to powerful knowledge

Abstract

‘Powerful knowledge’ is disciplinary knowledge that when learned, empowers students to make decisions in a way that will influence their lives in a positive way (Young, 2008). In this paper, the researcher employs this construct to explore the financial literacy education arising from studying secondary school economics. It emerges from the author’s research aimed at exploring teaching and learning in secondary school Maltese economics classrooms. The underlying conceptual framework for this study is critical realism. The study design consisted of interviewing and observing 14 economics teachers, together with four focus groups interviews with students. Data were analyzed by employing thematic analysis. Financial literacy emerged as a theme in the teachers’ and students’ voices and in the lesson observations. Economics education enabled students to grow financially literate. This resonates with the literature that economics education assists students into developing financial and economic literacies (e.g., Brant, 2018; Chang, 2014). The consideration of the relationship between powerful knowledge and financial literacy assists the reflection, policy development and practice relating to the teaching and learning of financial literacy through secondary school economics and what constitutes powerful knowledge in this area.