Financial Literacy: Application to the Modern Learner and to the World

Enrichment Curriculum and Financial Literacy
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Enrichment Curriculum and Financial Literacy
In the modern world, financial education is necessary for all individuals, whether they are employed or not. This knowledge is not only important to the individuals, but also to the nation’s economy. Including financial education as part of the school curriculum is a wise decision as a long-term process (Masnan & Curugan, 2016). This information needs to be built into curricula from an early age to enable the learners acquire knowledge and skills to become more responsible citizens. Financially literate individuals understand how money works through investment, expenditure and management. Throughout my years both as a young child and as an adult, I have learned several aspects in finance that have been instrumental towards my ability to manage money more effectively. Most of this knowledge was from my personal background, where I used to observe how my parents handled their finances and through this process, I have learned to challenge myself on how to become more effective. Therefore, this study is important as it allows me to explore the concept of financial literacy and how it applies to the modern learner and to the world.
A child growing up relies on their parents for financial support. At such a stage, the individual cannot understand the challenges involving in handling finances and hence lack the interest to learn the art finance management. However, after high school, the individual gets an opportunity to handle money and determine how to spend it. It is worth noting that whichever career that one chooses to pursue, it is impossible to avoid the topic of finance because the first place where one comprehensively interacts with it is at the college level. Incorporating the subject at the college and university level curriculum. While at work, in the military, and entrepreneurship, the individual faces some of the challenges and opportunities in handling finances. These stages determine the success of an individual in securing their future (Nitani, Riding, & Orser, 2020). Learners with solid financial knowledge are able to manage their finances more appropriately whereas those who lack these skills end up facing various life challenges, unable to accumulate wealth.
Unfortunately, Black and Brown students are underprepared for life due to systemic racism reaching back to the 1800’s. Neoliberal policies put restraints on how teaching should flow and prevents certain facts to be discussed in classes to ensure awareness of how Black and Brown individuals (marginalized groups) were set on a path keep them behind the curve of the White community (dominant group). As a mathematics teacher, it is my duty to ensure the curriculum is taught in a way that includes engagement, rigor, and purpose yet correlates with the mandated standards set by the district (policy/curriculum makers).
* Justification of significance of my focus
The high levels of unequal access to crucial education has necessitated my push for an equitable education/curriculum that is inclusive of standards that highlight concepts that will prepare students for life after secondary education. The DeKalb County School District provides math curriculum for learners from kindergarten to the twelfth grade. This curriculum is based on the state standards for each grade level. The current curriculum was constructed by a committee of ten people and reflects on the proficiencies that students have to accomplish and show their progress at school. The team of curriculum developers includes teachers as they are responsible for implementation in schools. The DeKalb County School District then makes a final decision following a deliberation from all stakeholders on how to implement the curriculum.
The DeKalb County School District has designed its curriculum in such a way that it only focuses on the theoretical understanding of mathematics as a subject. Its application in real life has not received considerable attention. Besides, the mode of implementation by teachers is not learner centered as it fails to incorporate important elements of instruction delivery. Enrichment curriculum entails giving the curriculum a greater value by including activities that extend the learners’ education beyond their course of study. The process involves ensuring that the teaching process provides appropriate engagement, rigor, and purpose for the learners. My review of the curriculum will also focus on establishing a skill-based curriculum, which abandons the drill and kill technique and instead embraces the performance based method. The curriculum will indiscriminately incorporate financial literacy to ensure that the learners have the relevant skills to handle their finances.
Research Questions
* Research Question #1 (Enrichment Curriculum): How has oppressive educational systems/policies/curriculum hindered Black and Brown students from receiving an equitable education where enrichment strategies are implemented and utilized in the classrooms to prepare students for life after secondary education?
* Research Question #2 (Financial Literacy): How can the concept of financial literacy be used as a tool of enrichment to ensure an equitable education is sustained and provided to Black and Brown students through the mathematics curriculum?
Rigor: Problem solving
The problem solving process began with conduction of a literature review to identify what other researchers have done on the topic and what needs to be done. Therefore, a systematic literature review was conducted on enrichment curriculum and financial literacy based on the two research questions highlighted above. Based on the first research question concerning enrichment curriculum, a range of literature was assessed covering the oppressive educational systems, any policies implemented to promote financial literacy among the learners, and curriculum limitations or challenges that serve as barriers to Black and Brown students achieving equitable education. The review on financial literacy based on the second research question covered the ways in which financial literacy can serve as a tool of enrichment to ensure equitable education.
Limitations of the review
While the literature review provided significant insights on enrichment curriculum and financial literacy problem that Black and Brown students face, these studies failed to explain how these concepts can be incorporated into the curriculum to ensure equitable access to learning. Consequently, this paper addresses these gaps by considering the gaps in the current mathematics curriculum, the neoliberal policies hindering equitable access, enrichment curriculum, and enrichment practices. Financial literacy is the basis of economic empowerment as it equips learners with the appropriate skills to manage their finances. Previous efforts to implement these skills has faced challenges from power structures, poor policies, insufficient resources, poor teacher preparation, lack of community engagement, poor student engagement, and lack of parent involvement.
Methods for Literature Review
I began the search process by creating a list of key words related to the research questions. The key terms I created are listed below
* Sources provided by Dr. Zoss & Dr. Junor-Clarke
* Terms:
1 Systemic Racism
2 Neoliberal Policies
3 Enrichment
4 Financial Literacy
5 Culturally Relevant/Responsive Pedagogy
I then used these keywords to begin the search process, where I accessed various databases to search for the relevant sources. The main databases I used included my university’s library catalogue, Google Scholar, JSTOR, EBSCOHost, and Proquest. For search terms that did not yield expected results, I tried substituting the terms with synonyms. I narrowed down my search using Boolean operators: “And” to find sources that contained more than one key word; “Or” to find sources that had a range of synonyms; and “Not” to exclude findings that contained certain terms. My inclusion criteria was all articles written in English and published at least 10 years ago. The exclusion criteria was on studies conducted over ten years ago and those from unreliable websites. I read the abstract of my identified articles to establish whether they were relevant to my question. I prioritized books and peer reviewed articles as these are often reliable sources of information. When reading through the sources, I identified the themes, debates, and gaps raised by the authors as a way of assessing the suitability of the studies for my research. I then sorted out the sources and arranged them thematically based on the two concepts: “Enrichment Curriculum” and “Financial Literacy” as provided in the research questions.
Literature Review
Enrichment Curriculum
Several researchers have analyzed the impact of enrichment curriculum on learners. Kim (2016) is one of these noble researchers, who undertook a meta-analysis to determine the impact of enrichment programs on gifted students. According to the findings of the study, enrichment programs had a positive impact on both the academic performance and socio-emotional development of the gifted students. While these findings provide significant insights on the contribution of enrichment programs towards student learning, it also has some limitations. A notable one is that the researcher relied on a smaller number of empirical studies for the meta-analysis, which meant that the finds would not be representative enough.
Homedan et al. (2021) also conducted a study whose goal was to identify the effectiveness of enrichment activities programs based on educational techniques in developing attitudes toward mathematics among third-grade learners in Jordan. The authors used a quantitative approach and according to their findings, there was a statistically significant different between the experimental and the control groups for the assessment of the impact of enrichment programs. The researchers confirm the findings by Kim (2016) that indeed enrichment programs had an effect on the learners. Like other studies, the study by Homedan et al. (2021) also suffers from some limitations. The authors classify these limits as objective limits, spatial limits, time limits, and human limits. While they may appear to be insignificant, these limits may ultimately affect the reliability and generalizability of the findings. For example, reliance on only third graders and the time limits mean that the findings were not representative enough for sufficient conclusions.
Reis, Renzuli, and Renzuli (2021) conduct a study to assess the impact of enrichment and gifted education pedagogy towards developing talents, gifts, and creative productivity. The researchers identified various types of engaging instructional strategies as forms of enrichment pedagogy that included interest-based learning pedagogy, differentiation and curriculum compacting, project-based learning, open-ended choice, and the utilization of creative productivity to students learning. Unlike Homedan et al. (2021), who utilized a quantitative approach, Reis, Renzuli, and Renzuli (2021) apply a systematic review to determine the effectiveness of the enrichment pedagogy to student learning. This approach has the advantage of producing reliable conclusions and also allows the researcher to convey vast amount of information quite easily and enable comparison of contrasting results. According to the findings of this study, there were longitudinal benefits for learners who are exposed to this type of teaching, indicating positive outcomes. While the authors do not highlight the challenges they faced on their study and the potential impact that they may have on their findings, one of the weaknesses of their approach is that there is no standard on how to obtain raw data and how to integrate the results. Consequently, the findings are more likely to be subjective.
Wiggins, Harding, and Engelbrecht (2017) conducted a case study with first year university students on student enrichment in mathematics. The purpose of the study was to showcase a possible avenue for the attendance of the needs of academically strong mathematics learners. The researchers presented a group of university students ann opportunity to explore a specific first year mathematics topic more comprehensively using an inquiry-based learning approach as part of the enrichment programme. The decision by the researchers to focus the study on university students was based on the finding that most of the enrichment studies focused on learners at primary and high school levels. The researchers noted that the learners exhibited willingness and enjoyment to participant in an enrichment program, which confirms that the use of enrichment programs was associated with some educational gains. These findings are similar to those of the previous researchers covered in this study, who confirm that the enrichment program helps enhance the interest of the learners in their studies.
Piggott (2007) also undertakes a case study approach towards assessing the nature of mathematical enrichment. The author describes the nature of mathematics enrichment that emerged from a case study that was absed on the work of NRICH Project. In conducting this research, the author sought to contribute to further discussion on the role of enrichment as a way of enhancing the learner experience towards mathematics. Like Reis, Renzuli, and Renzuli (2021); Wiggins, Harding, and Engelbrecht (2017); and Homedan et al. (2021), the author noted that the enrichment program provided a better learning experience among the students. According to Piggott (2007), this framework allowed the transformation of the education sector, especially in dealing with the poorly framed ideas at the time into more coherent perception of education. Thus the author affirms the findings by many other researchers who have also c...