Teaching and learning financial literacy within social studies – a case study on how to realise curricular aims and ambitions

ABSTRACT

Most salient financial literacy frameworks and curricula mainly focus on teaching and learning of simple money management. However, the financial demands placed on individuals today include much more complicated matters, such as buying a home and saving for retirement. Furthermore, financial literacy gives rise to normative questions such as what responsibility should be placed on individuals. In educational terms, this creates an alignment problem where the hopes and expectations placed in financial literacy as mass-education is not met by desirable results. This article uses previous results and the construct of powerful knowledge to discuss how financial literacy education in upper secondary school can benefit from an incorporation into social studies, which is an existing school subject in many educational systems. Findings include that teachers can utilize their existing teaching competence to also teach financial literacy. However, to accomplish results, both curricula and syllabi must guide teachers to abandon the focus on money management to instead focus on teaching students concerning the financial, economic and political issues that affect personal finances, yet at the same time can be affected by democratic decisions. Implications for financial literacy teaching and learning are discussed using the concept Powerful Financial Literacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Financial literacy
• financial literacy education
• social studies
• curriculum
• syllabus

Introduction

The demands on individuals concerning financial understanding, choices and management have increased over the last 30 years. Nowadays, housing, pensions and healthcare are all matters that are personally opted and financed which require extensive understanding of financial products and structures along with the ability to plan, both in the short- and long-term (Henchoz, 2016; Retzmann & Seeber, 2016). During the same period of time, using the term financial literacy [FL], the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] has advocated for the introduction of financial literacy education [FLE] in mass-education globally (OECD, 2005). But, unlike the financial situation for individuals, the content and aim of salient FLE initiatives did not change. The new FLE initiatives seem to have adopted traditional FL definitions (The World Savings and Retail Banking Institute/The European Savings and Retail Banking Group, 2021) that mainly focused on household finances such as managing income, expenditure and budgeting issues (Davies, 2015; OECD, 2019), hence the term money management. These educational initiatives were also mainly directed towards deprived groups of people and not mass-education (Henchoz, 2016; Tisdell et al., 2013).

Consequently, the widely utilized OECD (2019) definition of FL mainly focuses on individual money management and does not invite financial literacy teaching and learning to address the challenges and demands concerning financial competence and ability that is placed on individuals today (Arthur, 2012; Berti, 2016; Retzmann & Seeber, 2016; Sonu & Marri, 2018; Willis, 2017). Thus, there seems to be an alignment problem between the hopes and expectations invested in FLE and the teaching and learning that students are invited to in schools (Davies, 2015; Pinto, 2013) which should concern all educators that are involved in FL teaching. In recent years, however, several frameworks that suggest alternate approaches to FLE have been presented and discussed (Blue & Grootenboer, 2019; Davies, 2015), but it is still unresolved how FL teaching and learning challenges could be dealt with when FL is taught within existing school-subjects, particularly social studies in upper secondary school which is the case in several education systems around the world (Lefrançois et al., 2017; OECD, 2018; Retzmann & Seeber, 2016; Seeber, 2021).

This article aims to discuss how FLE can benefit from social studies education to become aligned with financial competence demands as well as becoming a feasible education in upper secondary school through epistemic framing. For this, the integration of FL into the Swedish social studies subject is used as a case study. Two questions are posed to guide this discussion:

-What are the content-related links between FLE and social studies education and what are the salient challenges in aligning them?

-How can these challenges be addressed in order to design teaching that aligns societal expectations with the current epistemological features in social studies?

Previous research financial literacy: definitions & differential ambitions

Due to the marketization of pivotal welfare functions in society such as housing, healthcare and pensions, individuals now depend upon the financial system in much more elaborate and advanced ways than before. Consequently, public demand for financial services such as mortgages, mutual funds and financial advice has increased. Even though these vast systemic changes also have offered individuals new means to choose and realize their lives, the financial instruments used also involve both personal as well as societal risks. Many voices from both private and public sectors have been raised with demands to educate students in personal finance within mass-education. This demand has been met by the OECD and by many national governments across the world—mainly presented using the term FL (Henchoz, 2016; Lusardi, 2008; OECD, 2005). Here, it is important to stress that FL and FLE initiatives do not mainly origin from academic or disciplinary contexts. Instead, banks (The World Savings and Retail Banking Institute/The European Savings and Retail Banking Group, 2021) and the political sphere have been the main creators of FL definitions. FL has even been described as non-epistemic (Remmele, 2016) and major FLE initiatives have been launched nationally as well as internationally before education scholars have had any chance to discuss FLE aims, content or plausible learning outcomes (Björklund, 2021). Thus, the OECD (2019) definition of FL and FLE has remained the most important and since its introduction it has served as a backdrop to most FL discussions (Bosshardt, 2016) and even though different regions around the world have different economic, social and financial conditions, countries and even continents that have relative macroeconomic and political stability seem to share a similar FL and FLE vision (García et al., 2013; OECD, 2018, 2019). In addition, FLE initiatives have also been launched to target low-income or financial risk groups on both local (Tisdell et al., 2013) as well as national level, such as Mexico (Ruiz-Durán, 2016).

The OECD (2019) approach to FLE, which also has been described as the conventional FLE approach (Lucey et al., 2015), mainly places agency and liability with the individual (Davies, 2015) with an educational focus on money management issues and concepts, such as income, expenditure, debt, savings and budget (Bosshardt, 2016; Council for Economic Education, 2013). This is also closely related to students’ ability to calculate, described as mathematical literacy (OECD, 2019). FL is also consequently contextualized in the private sphere and associated with personal success and even prudency (Appleyard & Rowlingson, 2013; Lucey & Bates, 2012). In fact, the OECD (2017) argues that FLE is dependent on students’ families to provide a proper educational context. Even though this definition includes knowledge of the financial system and other societal features affecting personal finances (OECD, 2015, 2018), the personal and private focus seems to overshadow possible elaborations of FLE to include financial and societal prerequisites (Björklund, 2021).

The conventional FLE approach, with the above-described focus on money management including calculations, is criticized from several perspectives. A main discussion concerns the general assumption surrounding financial behaviour related to financial well-being. Lucey and Bates (2012) describe this relationship as a matter of knowledge and self-discipline to avoid temptations and instead accumulate wealth. Furthermore, in the conventional FLE approach, financial decisions and actions are often described in words commonly used in relation to character measures, for example good, bad, sound or wise (Retzmann & Seeber, 2016; Riitsalu, 2018). This contextualization of FL implies two things: Firstly, FL is only in part built on generally applicable propositional knowledge. Instead, personal moral and closely associated diligence appear even more important. Secondly, the practical measures of money management, such as calculations and budgeting, are the most important means for financial success. Even though financial markets are highly volatile and the economic cycle can change rapidly, financial issues such as savings are presented as consistent and predictable where financial literacy concerns questions of right and wrong decisions and actions (Björklund, 2021). Thus, with its focus on personal traits and measures rather than on conceptual knowledge, it is even questioned whether the conventional FLE is fit for mass-education in schools (Retzmann & Seeber, 2016).

Few, if any, voices oppose the idea that money management is a decisive means to handle personal finances (Björklund & Sandahl, 2020). Instead, it is the importance that is instilled in money management as an educational measure that is criticized. For instance, many FL programs focus on the practical measures of money management (Pang, 2016) resulting in superficial and over-simplified education approaches with little bearing on real-life financial management (Willis, 2017). Björklund and Sandahl (2020) even suggest that money management issues, including budgeting, is not a knowledge problem among 16-year-old students. When exploring students’ pre-knowledge through an example concerning a personal financial dilemma, all students (n = 97) expressed an understanding regarding the plausible consequences when expenditure exceeds income including the need for calculations. If this is true for most students, we argue that many FLE initiatives miss the mark, at least when educating upper secondary students. Needless to say, this potentially constitutes a major alignment problem. The practical focus of FLE also seems to skew the educational aims towards instilling certain desirable financial behaviours in students, such as debt reduction and savings, rather than teaching them about financial services and interrelations (Retzmann & Seeber, 2016).

Here, it is important to bear in mind that many FL programs now have found their way into national curricula, hence FL is taught as mass-education to groups of students that come from different educational and socio-economic backgrounds. This raises a number of questions. For instance, it is well documented that individuals in low-income groups have very smalls means to change their financial situation (Blue et al., 2014) and that students’ socio-economic background, including parents’ educational status, are pivotal prerequisites for students’ current and future life situations (Blue & Grootenboer, 2019). To meet this challenge, it is suggested that conventional FLE approaches target individuals and open up for alternate learning outcomes for different students (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014), but at the same time most FLE approaches still do not recognize or incorporate students’ life-worlds (Fernandes et al., 2014; Kaiser & Menkhoff, 2017; Tisdell et al., 2013). If this is the practical interpretation of financial skills and capabilities acquisition stipulated in the OECD (2019) FL definition, perhaps it is not surprising that the outcome of many FLE initiatives are weak (Amagir et al., 2018; Blue & Grootenboer, 2019; Blue et al., 2014; Sawatzki, 2017), especially when measuring changes in financial behaviour (Amagir et al., 2019; Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014). At the same time, few efforts seem to have been made to address these issues, let alone any curricular revisions. Instead, the main pattern has been to stay on the beaten track and push forward, hence, the general FLE strategy can be summarized as ‘failures in FLE requires more FLE’ (Clarke, 2015, p. 270).

However, obstacles in addressing financial issues in relation to students’ life-worlds in a viable fashion seem to stretch beyond socio-economic and educational backgrounds. The sheer contextualization of financial issues as being an individual, hence also a private issue seems to explain parts of the FLE alignment problem. Björklund and Sandahl (2020) found that students who place all liability for a financial problem with the individual also had trouble finding possible solutions for that financial dilemma. This pinpoints another salient aspect of the criticism against the educational focus on individual money management. Davies (2015) argues that FLE also should include actions and responsibilities of banks and governments. This is an approach that serves several purposes. Individuals need to increase their knowledge concerning financial services in order to overbridge, or at least mitigate, the asymmetrical information relationship between banks and individuals. At the same time, FLE needs to teach students about the financial system and the different purposes it serves in society, along with the importance of financial policy making. Otherwise, FLE can become a means to divert attention from the behaviour of banks and governments where individuals are threatened to be reduced to comply and eventually become scapegoats for market and financial policy failures (Davies, 2015 cf.; OECD/Russia’s G20 Presidency, 2013). Other studies suggest that the conventional FLE approach legitimizes, and even has an implicit aim to socialize students into accepting the current financial and political system, and to teach neo-liberal ideas as if they were objective truths (Arthur, 2012; Pinto, 2013; Shanks, 2022; Sonu & Marri, 2018). This raises further questions how FLE could adopt more critical approaches and invite students to actually identify and get involved in questions concerning financial equity and injustice, both on a personal and societal level (Adams, 2019; Björklund, 2021; Lefrançois et al., 2017; Soroko, 2021).

In all, conventional FLE initiatives seem to suffer from an alignment problem which can be summarized in two major points: 1) Even though the lack of money management practice in society is a problem, money management does not seem to constitute a knowledge problem for 16-year-olds. Instead, the educational focus on money management seems to be a substitute and a presumed shortcut for achieving desirable financial behaviour. But, since it is hard to change one’s financial situation, it is also unlikely that conventional FLE could have any significant impact on this, especially in mass-education where students come from many different backgrounds. 2) Even though money management is an important financial means for individuals, it is not a proper teaching means to achieve any elaborate FL among upper secondary school students. Using this approach, it must be presumed that students already are familiar with all the financial and economic structures needed to make informed and sustainable financial choices because money management alone does not automatically invite students to learn about pivotal, and often decisive, ulterior financial and economic structures, incentives and decisions. Thus, the conventional FLE approach threatens to reduce FL teaching and learning to simple and superficial calculation and budgeting exercises with little or no bearing and significance on students’ current or future life situations.

Addressing FLE alignment problems: theoretical framework

In summary, there are two salient approaches to FL and FLE. The conventional FLE approach, with its focus on money management and personal diligence, remains the most salient and common FLE approach, even though the problems with the conventional FLE approach are, more than a decade after the financial crisis of 2008–2009, well known and extensively discussed in the literature. Juxtaposed to this view, there are alternate views building on that criticism. Davies (2015), Lucey et al. (2015) and Blue and Grootenboer (2019) have all presented alternate conceptions of what FL can be, and what FLE could include and invite students to learn. These frameworks recurrently suggest that money management training is not enough, societal factors in relation to individual financial capacity should be included in FLE along with teaching about the financial and political systems. However, when contrasted against the conventional FLE with its rather simple message, a coherent alternate approach, which places the individual in focus and relate different individual financial decisions and options to both current and future economic and financial orders, seems more difficult to define (Lucey, 2022) and turn into a feasible teaching design. At the same time, FLE is already included in well over 100 education systems in the world (OECD/INFE, 2015), and FL is also often taught together with another school subject, especially mathematics and social studies (OECD, 2017). It is very likely that the different framings of FLE have profound impact on both FLE aims and content choices.

In this article, the construct of powerful knowledge will be used to discuss alignment issues between social studies education and financial competence demands as well as possible ways to elaborate FLE within social studies. The idea of powerful knowledge was developed by Young and Müller (2013) who presented the idea that school has a unique opportunity to convey knowledge that has the potential to explain the world in a better and more reliable way than everyday knowledge can. Young (2015) shows that knowledge that solely derives from experience often suffers from being contingent on its context, hence this kind of knowledge is hard to generalize and does not provide the learner with new ways to see and grasp the world. Instead, knowledge, in terms of facts, epistemic structures and truths, should be drawn from academic disciplines (cf. Deng, 2015). Here, knowledge is tested, generalizable and therefore also usable in a multitude of situations and fashions. When knowledge is dependable it is also powerful in the sense that it gives individuals tools, not only to comprehend society but also to participate and eventually affect both personal and public life (Young, 2013).

Methods and materials

In this article, we draw on previous results concerning Swedish teachers’ views on teaching FL as well as Swedish students’ conceptions and learning of FL within social studies to further discuss the presented alignment problem between social studies and financial literacy. In other words, we use the implementation of FL into social studies in Sweden’s upper secondary school as a case to discuss the possibilities and obstacles concerning the integration of FL into an existing school subject and possible ways forward for FLE. The following argumentation is organized as follows. In the results section, FLE as integrated in the Swedish social studies subject in upper secondary school, will first be presented, which also include some elucidation concerning the institutional setting. Our research concerning FL teaching including its possibilities and challenges and learning potentials within social studies in Sweden’s upper secondary school will consecutively be displayed and discussed. Lastly in this section, an argument concerning the benefits of integrating FLE into social studies will be presented. This leads into the discussion section where we focus on what a sufficient FL can be and what social studies has the potential to contribute with concerning FLE. Finally, a conceptual vision to elaborate FLE as an integrated part of social studies and social sciences is discussed using the construct of powerful knowledge (Young & Müller, 2013; Young, 2013).

Results

The teachability and learnability of FL contextualized by social studies—the case of sweden

For exploring the FLE implementation into mass-education and possible ways forward for FL teaching and learning, the case of Sweden is applicable. In Sweden, FL is taught within two separate school subjects: Home and consumer knowledge in secondary school (year 7–9) and in social studies in both primary and secondary school (Swedish National Agency for Education [SNAE], 2018) and upper secondary school (SNAE, 2011), where year 1–9 is compulsory and year 10–12 is voluntary. This means that when 16-year-old upper secondary students learn FL within the first mandatory course of social studies, they have already received FL training within two different subjects, hence it is assumed that they also have some financial pre-knowledge. In this section, however, we will address FLE in the context of social studies for upper secondary school.

Most democratic countries have a particular subject in school for dealing with contemporary political, economic and social issues, in most cases referred to as social studies. However, they differ in terms of content areas. The US/Canadian school subject in most cases encompass, or is even dominated by, historical content while the subject in continental Europe is much narrower in terms of subject matter. Still, the subject of social studies aims to advance students’ understanding of social structures, relations and issues—and to consider and deliberate on the role of values in such issues (Barton & Avery, 2016; Barton, 2012). The construct of the Swedish subject of social studies (Swedish: samhällskunskap) can be described as belonging to the continental tradition where subject matter and analytic tools are derived from social scientific academic disciplines such as political science, sociology and economics. Furthermore, curricula and syllabi clearly express an ambition that teaching should strengthen students’ possibilities to participate in current affairs within the political system (Sandahl et al., 2022). Here, the facts, skills and abilities from the academic communities can be considered as powerful knowledge that students need to master in order to develop an academically rooted critical thinking (Sandahl, 2019, 2020; Young & Müller, 2013; Young, 2013). In this sense, FL is not only considered to be a private affair, but rather incorporated into socio-economic issues and should be dealt with using academic knowledge and abilities.

The social studies syllabus for upper secondary school stipulates that FLE should include:

Personal finance: Household income, expenditure, assets and liabilities. Consumer law and consumption in relation to needs and resources. How personal finances are affected by socio-economic changes

(SNAE, 2011).

It is important to stress that this is the full information that Swedish social studies teachers are given before teaching FL. The brief information in the syllabus should be understood against a background that Swedish teachers are given significant freedom to interpret and realize curricular demands, which, in turn, is a salient and pivotal part of the education system in Sweden and the idea of Bildung (Friesen, 2018; Hudson, 2002). However, in relation to an unresolved teaching unit, such as FL, together with the fact that all Swedish social studies teachers lack elaborate financial training, Swedish teachers join colleagues around the world to implement a very complicated and unresolved teaching assignment (Björklund, 2021; Blue et al., 2014). In summary, Swedish social studies teachers do not only realize something unresolved, but they are also co-creators of FLE. These circumstances made it particularly interesting to investigate how FLE is and could be addressed, interpreted and resolved within social studies.

Teaching FL as integrated into social studies

Björklund (2019, 2020) explored teachers’ self-reported perceptions of FL and FLE in relation to their teaching. A primary and over-arching finding in these studies is that teachers with five years or less teaching experience [novice teachers] compared to teachers with eight years or more teaching experience [experienced teachers] perceive and teach FL in quite different ways. The fact that novice and experienced teachers manage their teaching in different ways is well established in the literature and is often related to teachers’ different content and pedagogical knowledge (Gudmundsdottir & Shulman, 1987; Okas et al., 2014; Pilvar & Leijen, 2015; Skott, 2001). However, Björklund (2019, 2020) suggests that this difference also is prevalent when teachers teach something that they do not have any formal content knowledge in. Needless to say, different groups of teachers pursue different FLE patterns in relation to content choices, instructional measures and even teaching aims. Experienced teachers aim to equip their students with practical financial skills in order for them to manage future households, in other words mainly to focus on money management. This also means that experienced teachers seem to emphasize FLE more in relation to older students, motivated by the fact that these students soon will have to manage on their own compared to younger students who will remain with their parents for a longer period of time. Experienced teachers also expressed that they often adopt more practical and even instructive approaches when teaching students in vocational programmes compared to students in higher education preparatory programmes. This is often implicitly motivated by the fact that students in vocational programmes to a greater extent derive from deprived backgrounds compared to students in higher education preparatory programmes. Novice teachers, on the other hand, express an ambition to relate personal finances to socio-economic changes, such as the Swedish social studies syllabus says, yet the main focus implicitly still lies on practical money management. The main difference compared to experienced teachers, is that novice teachers teach FL in the same way and with the same aim regardless of what educational programme their students attend.

A second salient finding that can be drawn from Björklund (2019, 2020) is that all teachers explicitly or implicitly expressed doubts if FLE is properly contextualized together with social studies. The unresolved nature of FL definitions and FLE aims contributed to the uncertainty of how to teach FL within social studies. This ambiguity was often related to the perceived nature of FL as being something private, and hence it became unclear which societal or economic structures that financial issues can or should be related to. This created a situation which can be compared to Meno’s paradox (Plato, ca. 385 B.C.E./1984) – teachers understand that they do not comprehend but they do not know what to look for in order to understand. Thus, many teachers also expressed that their social science competence and skills as social studies teachers did not help them to teach FL. Instead, experienced teachers used their life skills and novice teachers, who did not draw on their own experience regardless of their age, depended on the social studies syllabus in order to ‘do the right thing’.

Identified teaching and learning challenges

Social studies teachers’ views concerning FL and FLE raise a number of questions regarding what a usable FL consists of, and how such a literacy can be taught within the context of social sciences. Here, it is important to stress that the questions of what and how to teach and learn are inseparable if we consider the result of FLE to be important—FL content must invite students to learn about issues and structures important for their current and future lives, but at the same time FLE must be teachable for teachers today and conceivable for upper secondary students. It is clear that money management alone is not sufficient as FL if we want young people to learn how to make informed and sustainable financial choices. We also know that money management alone is not sufficient as an educational measure if we want to aim for such a useful FL. This raises further questions concerning the possibilities of progressing and elaborating FL for upper secondary school. In other words: Is it possible for 16-year-olds to relate personal financial issues to economic and societal structures and is social studies a feasible educational context for FL teaching and learning?

Another question regards how social sciences and social studies can contribute to FL teaching and learning to address more critical approaches towards financial issues and structures. If financial issues should be considered as both a personal and societal matter, financial matters should also be possible to discuss as open and debatable questions, and also as relational questions which appear differently due to the shifting interests of stakeholders such as individuals, voters, banks, public authorities and governments. In other words: Is it possible to fully treat financial issues as social science issues and thereby to utilize teaching instruments from social studies such as debates, critical questions and perspective taking?

Björklund and Sandahl (2020) explored how upper secondary students perceive financial issues in relation to financial and societal structures. Students were confronted with a dilemma where a person had ended up in a financially unsustainable situation due to increased interest rates on her mortgages. The task was to discuss, in writing, who should be liable for this situation. Students’ answers show that understandings that describe the financial dilemma as a condition, focusing only on what the person should have done, did not present any explanation for how the problem had occurred nor any elaborate solutions for the financial problem. Instead, it was answers that related the situation to the financial system, along with answers that discussed that the financial system is constructed and thereby possible to change, that presented more elaborate financial understandings and critical discussions. Results from this study show that 16-year-olds can comprehend and discuss the financial, economic and political structures that give personal finance its prerequisites. The same results also show that social sciences and the Swedish social studies subject could be a feasible teaching context for FL where teachers’ current skills in political science, economics and sociology seem highly appropriate for this teaching assignment, not least for inviting students to more critical financial perspectives.

In the literature, a main concern is that critical perspectives are missing in the conventional FL definition (Lefrançois et al., 2017; Retzmann & Seeber, 2016). Instead, financial issues are often presented as being something that can be treated as questions of right and wrong. This also leads to an assumption that individuals should comply with the system, and when they fail to do so they show bad character. Hence, many FLE initiatives concentrate on procedural knowledge—on how to manage money in a household where the sole goal is to make ends meet (Björklund, 2021). If the goal is to invite students to develop knowledge and skills to make independent and informed financial decisions, teaching and learning should acknowledge that this involves choices that require other knowledge than sheer money management training can provide. Here, social sciences such as economics, political science and sociology could provide FLE with structures that can explain financial prerequisites as well as present financial issues as one of many economic and political questions in society.

Using social science means when teaching FL

Björklund and Sandahl (2021) explored how students respond to teaching that treats financial issues as open and debatable questions. Within a teaching intervention which consisted of four research lessons, students were invited to discuss financial issues that were actively related to the financial system and political decisions. Salient findings suggest that students who solely related financial issues to their own life-worlds presented no or shallow understanding for financial prerequisites and that financial decisions include elements of choice. At the same time, students that related to financial issues as being logical and self-evident results of structures and decisions found among financial and political agencies, also presented rather shallow understandings. The latter group of students seemed more preoccupied with producing ‘the right answer’ rather than discussing different perspectives and possible answers when relating personal financial issues to structures in society. Instead, it was students that kept discussing the questions posed to them and who questioned both current structures as well as possible outcomes of personal financial decisions that presented the most elaborate financial understandings. Thus, findings in Björklund and Sandahl (2021) suggest that not only is it possible to invite students to adopt a critical view of financial questions via social studies teaching—students that employ a critical approach also present a more developed financial understanding compared to students that quickly solve the problem presented to them.

The benefits of teaching financial literacy contextualized by social studies

As suggested in Björklund (2021) it seems both productive and feasible to relate FL to social sciences and social studies in order to realize ambitions in line with alternate FL approaches (Blue & Grootenboer, 2019; Davies, 2015; Lucey et al., 2015). Furthermore, the current skills and practices of social studies teachers become highly applicable when pursuing such FLE aims. When treating financial issues as political and even controversial issues, social studies can contribute with two important aspects that are at the very heart of the subject: academic disciplinary tools and critical perspectives (Jay, 2022; Johansson & Sandahl, in press). The first contribution lies in what social studies education calls first- and second order concepts (Sandahl, 2015). When FL is considered as a part of a wider socio-economic context, the conceptual richness from social sciences is something that is both reachable and usable for teachers, and most importantly something that social studies teachers already have in their toolbox. When displaced from private to public settings, concepts such as debt, budget and cost can be explored and taught in different settings. Also, financial systems and the general economy provide for deeper understanding that takes students beyond the typical individual perspectives (Björklund et al., 2022). More importantly however, is the notion of second-order thinking, in other words the procedural knowledge that guides social scientists when they interpret, analyse and assess social phenomena. Here, Sandahl (2015; cf. Barton, 2017; Newmann, 1990) has suggested six procedural thinking concepts: cause and consequence, evidence, the use of models and theories, compare and contrast, perspective-taking and normative assessments. In relation to FL, thinking concepts can function as an instrument in advancing students’ analysis and evaluation of private and public affairs. One such important aspect is to understand the relationship between economic agents such as consumers or producers, and the system as a whole (e.g. markets or specific regulations) and engaging with the perspectives of different agents within the system. Perspective-taking also includes different stands that people might have in relation to the issue at hand (Sandahl, 2019, 2020), such as critique against consumer-driven growth that is closely related to the behaviours of individuals. For social studies teachers, these ways of engaging with social issues are familiar grounds. The second contribution lies in what Jay (2022) calls critical perspectives. The notion here is that academic and disciplinary knowledge in dealing with social issues are necessary but not adequate—the academic perspectives have to be supplemented with relevance and introduced in the context of real-world problems, in other words connected to students’ life-world (Fallace, 2017; Johansson & Sandahl, in press). As FL in nature deals with individual, or even private, considerations about finances, the link to the life-world is strong but can be expanded beyond individual perspectives and connected to the world of politics and deliberations on how societies function as well as how they could or should function. This wider engagement with FL involves the aspects taken from the social sciences, not least to see different perspectives on societal development and the role of normativity when discussing the economic world.

Discussion

Why should we teach and learn FL as part of mass-education? Plausible answers to this question have profound effects on FLE aims, and certainly there are different possible paths to follow. Yet the answer to this question seems to have been treated as obvious or even arbitrary by salient FLE stakeholders: individuals should mainly be taught to manage their finances and to handle financial instruments and services (OECD/Russia’s G20 Presidency, 2013). If we, for the moment, disregard the fair and salient argument that this approach also implies that individuals also should be taught to comply with the current financial and political system (Arthur, 2012; Sonu & Marri, 2018; Willis, 2017), perhaps a benevolent interpretation of the vast focus on money management and calculation as educational measures can be considered a misguided precision of a FL learning objective. It is self-evident for someone with financial, economic and political understandings that any personal financial decision depends upon these matters, hence an assumption can be made that it is enough to teach money management in school since this activity incorporates all the other ulterior premises. However, almost all research conducted on teaching and learning stress the fact that students need to be invited to what we want them to learn and the skills we want our students to have need to be practised. The focus on money management, although initially important, is not only an insufficient means; it also seems to interfere with the elaboration of FL skills (Björklund & Sandahl, 2020; Björklund, 2021) especially when imputing such weight and importance to money management that the success of FLE initiatives is measured by change in financial behaviour (Blue & Grootenboer, 2019).

If we are serious about a FLE aim that enables and empowers individuals to live a full life and make informed financial decisions (OECD, 2019) we must abandon discussions concerning desired financial behaviour. Many FLE initiatives that measure its effect by the change of individual financial behaviour show weak results (Amagir et al., 2018, 2019; Sawatzki, 2017) and perhaps this, partly, can be explained by the fact that it is almost impossible to derive meaningful and effective content features and instructional means from this objective. From a wider perspective, it is also highly questionable if an educational aim to change the behaviour in relation to teaching that mainly focuses on money management is consistent with democratic values and ideas (cf. Reinhardt, 2016) that define almost all aspects of western educational systems. Instead FLE initiatives must find their aims and instructional means elsewhere. Here FLE can follow two very different paths. On the one hand, it is argued that FLE should narrow its focus to really address the actual financial opportunities and difficulties that students face. Fernandes et al. (2014) suggest that a just in time FLE is sufficient and Kaiser and Menkhoff (2017) argue for teachable moments. On the other hand, it is argued that FLE should broaden its focus in order to incorporate more aspects concerning students’ current and future life-worlds (Berti, 2016; Retzmann & Seeber, 2016). And that cannot be done without introducing many societal and economic issues at the same time. In the end, we argue that financial decisions are the results of personal freedom and thereby should be related to societal issues such as the financial system, and not least economic and political structures. In other words, in order to elaborate students’ FL, FLE should be taught as a societal and democratic issue where students are invited to develop their understanding of financial and economic structures as well as their critical sense and financial judgement (Berti, 2016; Lefrançois et al., 2017; Retzmann & Seeber, 2016). Historically, many FLE initiatives around the world have targeted low-income groups (Blue et al., 2014; Erner et al., 2016; Ruiz-Durán, 2016)) which can explain the focus on short term money management and increased savings with an aim to prevent individuals from ending up in financial difficulties. FLE in mass-education, on the other hand, should widen its objectives. Only a few students in each class belong to financial risk groups but all students need education to make informed choices concerning life’s big decisions such as housing, pension and health care.

In this light, social studies, which includes content features from political science, economics and sociology, not only seems to be a proper teaching and learning context for FL (Björklund & Sandahl, 2020) - it seems like the only school subject that truly can offer FL a sufficient epistemic framing (Berti, 2016; Björklund, 2021). Social studies teachers’ current competence is also aligned with the demands and expectations such a FLE would bring, but at the same time it is important that curricula and syllabi stress that the FLE aim should be focused on financial premises rather than financial conduct (cf. Björklund, 2019, 2020). Another aspect of financial and economic life that can be addressed in social studies is the financial premises that actually can be changed by democratic means (Björklund & Sandahl, 2021; Björklund, 2021). Here, students are invited to compare the different financial incentives between individuals and citizens, hence FLE also concerns questions well beyond personal finances (Davies, 2015). Discussions concerning different incentives can also be related to other economic agents such as banks, central banks and politicians. These perspectives can be used to problematize financial issues and elucidate the risks involved when making financial decisions with both short- and long-term effects on both personal finances and the economy.

In all, the case of FLE as incorporated in social studies in Sweden’s upper secondary school shows some really promising preconditions in becoming the teaching and learning context that enables the expectations invested in FL and FLE. However, this is not a self-evolving or automatic process. Even though all preconditions seem to be in place, the aim of FLE must be carefully stipulated and defined in curricula and syllabi. It is therefore promising that the revised syllabus for upper secondary social studies in Sweden places the focus for FLE between household finances and socio-economic flows and structures (SNAE, 2022). How this is interpreted and realized by teachers, however, is yet to be seen.

Powerful financial literacy—a conceptual vision

From a powerful knowledge (Young & Müller, 2013; Young, 2013) rationale, it seems clear that FL and FLE, which do not derive from any established academic discipline (Remmele, 2016) needs to utilize epistemic means from academic disciplines such as economics (Retzmann & Seeber, 2016), political science and sociology (Arthur, 2012; Berti, 2016; Lefrançois et al., 2017) in order to become both teachable and learnable. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, concepts, theories and facts from these disciplines can equip FL teaching and learning with necessary tools, not least when educating critical individuals (Sandahl, 2019, 2020) Thus, in line with Lefrançois et al. (2017), Soroko (2021) and Adams (2019), we argue that it is decisive that the social studies curriculum and syllabus allow and encourage teachers to adopt critical perspectives on financial and even economic literacy. But even more importantly, from a powerful knowledge perspective it seems clear that any FLE initiative should provide students with a FL that provides them with the tools to understand their own finances in relation to the current financial economic and social systems, as well as to interact with the same to be able to shape their own future and perhaps even the future of society (cf. Shanks, 2022).

From such a perspective, the ever-changing relations between individuals, the financial system and the political sphere should be in focus for any FLE syllabus or curriculum. More precisely, we argue that two approaches have the ability to provide students with powerful financial literacy: Firstly, financial preconditions are not predictable, hence financial markets and actions should not be presented as such. The economy is always in motion which, in turn, always affects personal finances in a multitude of ways. Moreover, the political sphere affects the economy and thereby personal finances and it is far from certain that the political aim is to protect individuals. However, it is likely to assume that if students are invited to discuss plausible implications from a change of interest rates or financial regulations on personal finances, their chances to plan for the future and make informed financial decisions could indeed increase. Secondly, FL teaching should present examples of the different aims and incentives that different financial stakeholders, such as banks, government agencies and political interest groups hold. For instance, by presenting cases to students where individuals are customers that buy bank products, such as a loan or a mutual fund, and banks are sellers of these products, different perspectives and incentives could be elucidated. In relation to stakeholders’ different incentives, students are invited to critically discuss concepts such as risk, and short- and long-term debts and investments.

Any serious elaborated FLE for upper secondary school should carefully convey tools to understand financial preconditions rather than practice students in managing their money. And when FLE is incorporated into a social studies subject, other interests apart from individual benefits are possible to discuss. In line with Davies (2015), we argue that an elaborated FL in the shape of powerful financial literacy also is an important competence in order to understand and change society in economic and political ways, and, in line with arguments presented by Blue and Grootenboer (2019), address questions of equity and inequality. In this sense, FL becomes usable in the multitude of situations and fashions that Young and Müller (2013, 2013) have argued for in school curricula.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.