Abstract
The teaching in schools of various topics related to the economy has been proposed for different purposes and under different titles, such as economic education (e.g. National Council for Economic Education 2010), consumer education (Benn 2004) and, more recently, financial education (INFE 2012). Designing standards and curricula and implementing intervention studies have mainly involved economists and educators, rather than educational researchers and cognitive and educational psychologists. Economic notions and competences have therefore remained on the fringe of theoretical debates and empirical research on teaching and learning of disciplines. These debates and research have been more focused on natural sciences and mathematics viewed from the perspective of naive theories, developmental sequence and learning progression. In this chapter, I illustrate these notions and show how economic concepts can be introduced into financial education. I present a summary of the literature on children’s understanding of the economic world in the absence of formal instruction. Building on this literature and some intervention studies, I propose a learning progression of economic and financial concepts during K-8 years, that is, a pathway for guiding students to ways of thinking or acting that gradually align with scientific versions, grounded in the results of developmental and instructional research.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ajello, A. M., Bombi, A. S., Pontecorvo, C., & Zucchermaglio, C. (1986). Children’s understanding of agriculture as an economic activity: The role of figurative information. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 1(3), 67–80.
Ajello, A. M., Bombi, A. S., Pontecorvo, C., & Zucchermaglio, C. (1987). Teaching economics in primary school: The concepts of work and profit. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 10(1), 51–69.
Apple, M. W., & King, N. (1990). Economics and control in everyday school life. In M. W. Apple (Ed.), Ideology and curriculum. New York: Routledge.
Aprea, C. (2015). Secondary school students’ informal conceptions of complex economic phenomena. International Journal of Educational Research, 69, 12–22.
Arthur, C. (2012). Consumers or critical citizens? Financial literacy education and freedom. Critical Education, 3(6). http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182350. Accessed on April 2014.
Beder, S. (2006). The role of “Economic Education” in achieving capitalist hegemony. University of Wollongong Research on line. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=artspapers. Accessed on April 2014.
Benn, A. (2004). Consumer education between ‘consumership’ and citizenship: experiences from studies of young people. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 28(2), 108–116.
Berti, A. E. (1999). Knowledge restructuring in an economic subdomain: Banking. In W. Schnotz, S. Vosniadou, & M. Carretero (Eds.), New perspectives on conceptual change (pp. 113–133). Oxford, UK: Pergamon.
Berti, A. E. (2005). Children’s understanding of politics. In M. Barrett, & E. Buchanan-Barrow (Eds.), Children’s understanding of society (pp. 69–103). UK: Psycology Press.
Berti, A. E., & Andriolo, A. (2001). Third graders understanding of core political concepts (law, nation-state, government) before and after teaching. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 127(4), 346–377.
Berti, A. E., & Benesso, M. (1998). The concept of Nation-state in Italian elementary school children: spontaneous concepts and effects of teaching. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 120(2), 121–143.
Berti, A. E., Bombi, A. S. (1988). The child’s construction of economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dpa.psy.unipd.it/it/index.php?p=24&id=102. Accessed on April 2014.
Berti, A. E., Bombi, A. S., & Lis, A. (1982). The child’s conceptions about means of production and their owners. European Journal of Social Psychology, 12, 221–239.
Berti, A. E., & De Beni, R. (1988). Prerequisites for the concept of shop profit: Logic and memory. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 361–368.
Billimoria, J., Penner, J., & Knoote, F. (2013). Developing the next generation of economic citizens: financial inclusion and education for children and youth. Enterprise Development and Microfinance, 24(3), 204–2018.
Brenner, M. E. (1998). Meaning and money. Educational studies in Mathematics, 36(2), 123–155.
Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Child and Youth Finance International (2012a). Children and youth as economic citizens: review of research on financial capability, financial inclusion, and financial education. Research Working Group Report. Amsterdam: CYFI.
Child and Youth Finance International (2012b). A guide to economic citizenship education—Quality financial, social and livelihoods education for children and youth. Amsterdam: CYFI.
Council for Economic Education. (2010). Voluntary national content standards (2nd ed.). New York: Council for Economic Education. http://www.councilforeconed.org/resource/national-standards-for-financial-literacy. Accessed on May 2014.
Delval, J. (1994). Stages in the child’s construction of social knowledge. In M. Carretero & J. F. Voss (Eds.), Cognitive and instructional processes in history and the social studies (pp. 77–102). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Diez-Martinez, E., & Delval, J. (2010). Mexican adolescents’ comprehension about bank functions: Considerations regarding the development of school curricula. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 9(2), 84–93.
Drenten, J., Peters, C. O., & Boyd, Thomas J. (2008). An exploratory investigation of the dramatic play of preschool children within a grocery storeshopping context. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 36(10), 831–855.
Duit, R. (2009). Bibliography-STCSE: Students’ and teachers’ conceptions and Science Education. http://www.ipn.uni-kiel.de/aktuell/stcse/stcse.html. Accessed on January 2015.
Duschl, R. A., Schweingruber, H. A., & Shouse, A. V. (2007). Taking science to school: Learning and teaching science in grades K-8. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Emler, N., & Dickinson, J. (2005). Children’s understanding of social class and occupational groupings. In M. Barrett, & E. Buchanan-Barrow (Eds.), Children’s understanding of society. UK: Psycology Press.
Emler, N., Ohana, J., & Moscovici, S. (1987). Children’s beliefs about institutional roles: A cross-national study of representations of the teacher’s role. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 57, 26–37.
Evans, E. M., Rosengren, K., Lane, J. D., & Price, K. S. (2012). Encountering counterintuitive ideas: Constructing a developmental learning progression for evolution understanding. In K. Rosengren, S. K. Brem, E. M. Evans, & G. M. Sinatra (Eds.), Evolution challenges: Integrating research and practice in teaching and learning about evolution (pp. 174–199). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Furnham, A. (2005). Understanding the meaning of tax: Young peoples’ knowledge of the principles of taxation. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 34, 703–713.
Furnham, A., & Cleare, A. (1988). School children’s conceptions of economics: Prices, wages, investments, and strikes. Journal of Economic Psychology, 9, 467–479.
Gelman, S. A., & Legare, C. H. (2011). Concepts and folk theories. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40(1), 379–398.
Gibbs, J. (2014). Moral development and reality. Beyond the theories of Kohlberg, Hoffman and Haidht. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gwartney, J., & Shug, M. C. (2011). What every high school student and teacher needs to know about economics. In M. C. Shug & W. C. Wood (Eds.), Teaching economics in troubled times (pp. 11–36). New York: Routledge.
Holden, K., Kalish, C., Scheinholtz, L., Dietrich, D., & Novak, B. (2009). Financial literacy programs targeted on pre-school children: development and evaluation. Available at http://www.cunapfi.org/download/168_CUNA_Report_PHASE_ONE_FINAL_4-28-9.pdf.
Hung, A. A., Parker, A. M., & Yoog, J. K. (2009). Defining and measuring financial literacy. Working paper 708: RAND Labor and Population working paper series. http://www.prgs.edu/content/dam/rand/pubs/workingpapers/2009/RANDWR708.pdf. Accessed on January 2015.
Huston, S. J. (2010). Measuring financial literacy. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 44(2), 296–316.
INFE (International Network on Financial Education) (2012). Financial education in schools. http://www.financial-education.org. Accessed on January 2015.
Jahoda, G. (1979). The construction of economic reality by some Glaswegian children. European Journal of Social Psychology, 9, 115–127.
Jahoda, G. (1981). The development of thinking about economic institution: The bank. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 1, 55–73.
Junior Achievement. (2015) Junior achievement programs. https://www.juniorachievement.org/web/ja-usa/home. Accessed on January 2015.
Kelemen, D. (2012). Teleological minds: How natural intuitions about agency and purpose influence learning about evolution. In K. Rosengren & E. M. Evans (Eds.), Evolution challenges: Integrating research and practice in teaching and learning about evolution (pp. 66–92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kołodziej, S. (2012). How do Polish children understand economic concepts? General and Professional Education, 1, 15–22.
Leiser, D., & Halachmi, R. B. (2006). Children’s understanding of market forces. Journal of Economic Psychology, 27, 6–19.
Leiser, D., Sevon, G., & Lévi, D. (1990). Children’s economic socialization: Summarizing the cross-cultural comparison of ten countries. Journal of Economic Psychology, 11(4), 591–614.
McCormick, M. H. (2009). The effectiveness of youth financial education: A review of the literature. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 20(1), 70–83.
Moses, L. J., & Baldwin, D. A. (2005). How can the study of cognitive development reveal about children’s ability to appreciate and cope with advertizing? Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 24(2), 186–201.
Noles, N. S., & Keil, F. C. (2011). Exploring ownership in a developmental context. In H. Ross & O. Friedman (Eds.), Origins of ownership of property. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (Vol. 132, pp. 91–103).
Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. New York: Cambridge University Press.
OECD. (2013). Advancing national strategies for financial education: A joint publication by Russia’s G20 Presidency and the OECD. Paris: OE.
Otto, A. (2012). Saving in childhood and adolescence. Insights from developmental psychology. CSD Working Papers, No. 12–20. Washington: Washington University in St. Louis, Center for Social Development.
Peterson, J. (2013). Economic education after the crisis: Pluralism, history, and institutions. Journal of Economic Issues, 47(2), 401–409.
Remund, D. L. (2010). Financial literacy explicated: The case for a clearer definition in an increasingly complex economy. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 44(2), 276–295.
Rupp, N. G. (January 13, 2012). Teaching economic concepts with a bag of chocolate: A classroom experiment for elementary school students. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1747284 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1747284. Accessed on April 2014.
Scheinholtz, L., Holden, K., & Kalish, C. (2012). Cognitive development and children’s understanding of personal finance. In D. J. Lamdin (Ed.), Consumer knowledge and financial decisions: Lifespan perspectives (pp. 29–47). Berlin: Springer Science + Business Media.
Shantz, C. U. (1987). Conflict between children. Child Development, 58, 283–305.
Stiglitz, J. E. (2000). Capital market liberalization, economic growth and instability. World Development, 28(6), 1075–1086.
Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vosniadou, S. (2013). International handbook of research on conceptual change (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Webley, P. (2005). Children’s understanding of economics. In M. Barrett & E. Buchanan-Barrow (Eds.), Children’s understanding of society. Hove: Psychology Press.
Wellman, H. M., & Gelman, S. A. (1998). Knowledge acquisition in foundational domains. In D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, fifth editions, volume 2: Cognition, perception, and language (pp. 523–573). New York: Wiley.
Wiser, M., & Smith, M. (2009). How does cognitive development inform the choice of core ideas in the physical sciences? DRAFT of Commissioned Paper for NRC Conference: Expert Meeting on Core Ideas in Science Keck Center, Room 100 Washington, DC, August 17, 2009.
Zamagni, S. (1995). Obiettivi e contenuti di una educazione economica di base. (Objectives and contents of a basic economic education). In A. S. Bombi (Ed.), Economia e processi di conoscenza [Economics and cognitive processes] (pp. 23–40). Turin: Loescher.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Berti, A.E. (2016). Sketching a Possible Learning Progression for the Cognitive Component of Financial Education in the Broader Context of Economic Education. In: Aprea, C., et al. International Handbook of Financial Literacy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0360-8_33
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0360-8_33
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0358-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0360-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)