Building the financial education capacity of teachers: Does it make a difference?

Abstract

This chapter explores the preparation of educators to teach personal finance and professional development programmes designed to build their financial education capacity. Teachers cannot teach personal finance well if they do not understand it themselves and/or cannot engage their students. Unfortunately, there is evidence that many teachers lack content knowledge obtained through both formal and informal educational experiences. As various countries have adopted financial literacy mandates in the wake of the global financial crisis, interest has increased in providing quality teacher professional development experiences and documenting their impact. This chapter begins with an introduction about general financial literacy challenges and growing interest in financial education, followed by a literature review about teacher financial education competency levels. Also included are studies of personal finance teacher training programmes and their impacts. The chapter then describes the content and format of two recent U.S. financial education professional development programme models. Assessments of the impact of these financial education training programmes are discussed including specific methods of measuring changes in teachers' knowledge and confidence. The chapter ends with recommendations about teacher training for policy and practice.