Designing mathematical tasks to enhance financial literacy among children in Grades 1–8

ABSTRACT

One approach to incorporating financial literacy into educational curricula is the integration of it into closely related courses such as mathematics. Research on curriculum development that fosters the integration of mathematics and financial literacy is necessary. This study aims to develop mathematical tasks that are embedded with financial literacy concepts to be integrated into mathematics courses. The tasks were designed for children in Grades 1 through 8. They were shaped by considering mathematical education standards, concepts, subjects and objectives. The tasks also addressed related societal issues including fair wages and working conditions. The dynamics that shape the design of the tasks include the interrelationship between mathematics education and financial literacy, children's (as the target age group) financial understanding and task design parameters. Each task, on the one hand, contains the first page geared toward students; on the other, it presents the implementation steps, teaching guidelines, cautions and limitations for teachers as well as background served as the inspiration for the task design. It is expected that the tasks will contribute to the development of students from an early age in financial literacy education as well as be beneficial for relevant experimental studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s financial understanding
• financial literacy
• interrelationship between mathematics and financial literacy
• mathematical tasks
• task design parameters

Acknowledgement

This study is produced from the post-doctoral research of the first author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştirma Kurumu [grant number 1059B191802080].