The financial numeracy afforded in secondary mathematics: A study on the textbooks, perceptions and practices of teachers in Quebec, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Financial education has become increasingly more important worldwide However, this matter has yet to find mainstream attention in mathematics education. A mathematics education perspective is necessary because, despite the role of mathematics in financial education being recognized by researchers and institutions, we still lack a conceptual framework to understand how mathematics and financial education interact and contribute to each other. In this research, I used the concept of financial numeracy to refer to the knowledge, confidence and ability to use numerical information in financial situations. I mobilized this concept through three dimensions of financial numeracy: contextual (financial situations as a context to teach mathematics), conceptual (mathematics as a way to make sense of financial concepts) and systemic (mathematics and financial situations connected to other epistemological systems: ethics, values, beliefs, politics, etc.).With increasing efforts to incorporate financial numeracy in curricula around the world, the question of how to teach it still lacks an appropriate answer. I addressed this issue by focusing on financial numeracy from the perspective of one key stakeholder: mathematics teachers from Quebec, Canada. To understand their context and inform future professional development to teachers, I asked three research questions: 1. What are the representations of financial numeracy in the didactical materials available to secondary mathematics teachers in Quebec? 2. What are their perceptions of financial numeracy in the context of a professional development session? 3. What aspects of financial numeracy do they emphasize in their teaching? I used quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze financial numeracy tasks from 40 textbooks, the perceptions shared by 35 teachers in six professional development focus groups, and the teaching practices enacted by six teachers when they implemented financial numeracy lessons.The results showed a diverse range of financial numeracy approaches. In the textbook collections, financial numeracy tasks comprised of short word problems that emphasized the explicit mathematical content, multi-step problems that connected mathematical processed to their real-life meaning, and open-ended tasks that incorporated students’ personal experiences and perspectives into the justification of the problems. In the professional development sessions, the perceptions of teachers were informed by their professional and personal stances toward financial numeracy, which in turn revealed two orientations toward this concept: those who were concerned about the connections between financial numeracy and mathematical concepts from the curriculum, and those who expressed a tension between their desire for students to be financially numerate and their lack of knowledge of financial concepts. Finally, the classroom data revealed four main teaching practices enacted by teachers in financial numeracy lessons: emphasizing procedural fluency in financial situations, using technology to focus on interpreting results of financial problems, sharing personal experiences regarding financial situations, and providing practical advice on financial matters to students.The results of this research contribute to advancing our understanding of this emerging concept by unifying the different approaches used in research into one coherent framework of financial numeracy. Overall, this concept is a powerful conceptual tool to think about the ways of introducing and integrating financial situations in mathematics classrooms. It provides insights to what teachers can afford to do and justify their choices based on their own perspectives and the institutional affordances of the school system. Financial numeracy fundamentally concerns mathematics educators and this research has shown possible paths they can build to have their voices heard in this matter
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".