Year: 2018
Author: Wait, Lisa, Jordan, Associate Professor Kathy, Russell, Professor Roslyn
Type of paper: Abstract refereed
Abstract:
Navigating Australia’s financial and consumer landscape requires good financial knowledge, and skills as well as positive attitudes and behaviours. We are living in a consumer driven society with online shopping, easy access to credit and the ability to accumulate debt and where money transactions through electronic channels such as PayPoint, BPay, EFTPOS and credit cards are increasingly invisible thus testing financial behaviours such as financial self-control and saving for the future. At the same time there is a shift from state to individual responsibility for financial security from the aged pension to superannuation. Surveys of financial capability indicate that young Australians in particular are financially vulnerable. In this challenging context of the 21stCentury, young people having the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours to achieve life-long financial well-being is of interest to policy makers, researchers, educators, parents and students.
Australian Government has invested heavily in financial education for schools in response to low levels of financial capability amongst young people. Research on financial education demonstrates that teacher training is a factor in successful student learning while teachers are generally poorly prepared to teach financial capabilities. Teachers, who are not financially literate or capable and have low sense of financial well-being, may not have the self-efficacy to teach financial education and even avoid teaching it altogether.
In this presentation we report on a project which investigated pre-service teacher levels of financial well-being and examined if it has an impact on their financial education teaching self-efficacy. Pre-service teacher self-efficacy is of particular interest because once efficacy beliefs are established they are resistant to change. The presentation will report on the analysis conducted on expert interviews and a pre-service teacher online survey. It will also consider implications for Australian Government financial education policy and programs.
Australian Government has invested heavily in financial education for schools in response to low levels of financial capability amongst young people. Research on financial education demonstrates that teacher training is a factor in successful student learning while teachers are generally poorly prepared to teach financial capabilities. Teachers, who are not financially literate or capable and have low sense of financial well-being, may not have the self-efficacy to teach financial education and even avoid teaching it altogether.
In this presentation we report on a project which investigated pre-service teacher levels of financial well-being and examined if it has an impact on their financial education teaching self-efficacy. Pre-service teacher self-efficacy is of particular interest because once efficacy beliefs are established they are resistant to change. The presentation will report on the analysis conducted on expert interviews and a pre-service teacher online survey. It will also consider implications for Australian Government financial education policy and programs.