Pre-service teachers: does financial wellbeing and capability affect teacher self-efficacy?
Creators: name: Wait, Lisa
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 390201
subject: Education policy

description: Purpose
 
Learning about money is often seen as ‘family business’, which makes it tricky to teach. Yet many teachers have been found to be ill-equipped to teach financial education. This research focuses on pre-service teacher financial wellbeing, financial capability and efficacy to teach financial education to gain insight into their preparation for effective teaching and learning.   Pre-service teachers for the purpose of this study included people studying early childhood, primary and secondary school teaching in the Australian state of Victoria.
   
Research questions
 
The primary research question was: 
What is the relationship between a pre-service teacher’s financial wellbeing and capability and their efficacy to teach financial education?  
There were four secondary research questions: 
1. What are pre-service teachers’ levels of financial wellbeing and how financially capable are they? 
2. What factors contribute to a pre-service teacher's financial wellbeing and capability?  
3. What is the financial education teacher self-efficacy of pre-service teachers?  
4. How might pre-service teachers be better prepared to teach financial education?     

Design/methodology 

This study used a mixed methodology and was conducted in three phases:  
• Phase 1 – five financial education experts were interviewed 
• Phase 2 – 181 pre-service teachers were surveyed online
• Phase 3 – four focus groups were conducted with 26 pre-service teachers.   
The research was designed to identify a range of individual perspectives and social contexts based on the views of experts and pre-service teachers to provide further insight into the survey data.        

Findings

This study found that efficacy to teach financial education is related to the following components of financial wellbeing and financial capability:
• Financial wellbeing components – feeling comfortable, meeting commitments
• Financial behaviour – active saving 
• Attitudes/psychological traits – attitude to money management, time orientation
• Socioeconomic environment – SES 2.  

Financial wellbeing
 
The research found that pre-service teachers have the same average level of overall financial wellbeing as a national sample of the Australian population, with the former obtaining a score of 59.0 out of 100 (Kempson &amp; Poppe 2018; ANZ, 2018). For the financial wellbeing component of meeting commitments, pre-service teachers scored 65.6, significantly lower than the national adult sample, which scored 70.9 (ANZ, 2018). There were no statistically significant differences between the two samples for the components feeling comfortable and financial resilience (ANZ, 2018). 
Financial capability

The financial capability of pre-service teachers was investigated through the measurement of behaviours (active saving, spending restraint and not borrowing for day-to-day expenses); psychological traits (attitude to money management, time orientation, impulse control, self-control, attitude to money management and action orientation); financial knowledge (money management experience); and the attitudinal trait of financial self-efficacy (Kempson &amp; Poppe, 2018).
 
Pre-service teachers scored 70.2 for the financial behaviour active saving, which was significantly higher than the national adult sample, which scored 63.1. There were no statistically significant differences between the two samples for the financial behaviours of spending restraint and not borrowing for day-to-day expenses (ANZ, 2018).

The research found that pre-service teachers scored 72.7 for the psychological trait attitude to money management, which was significantly higher than the national adult sample’s score of 69.7. However, pre-service teachers had significantly lower scores than the national adult sample for time orientation (57.5) (national sample 60.8), impulse control (63.0) (national sample 66.4), self-control (54.6) (national sample 57.6) and action orientation (40.4) (national sample 55.1) There was no statistical difference between the two samples for locus of control (ANZ, 2018).   

Pre-service teachers scored 57.5 for their financial knowledge, which was significantly lower than the Australian population (87.3) (ANZ, 2018). The pre-service teacher financial self-efficacy score of 14.9 (out of a range of 6 to 24) was lower than the normative sample, which was between 16 and 18 (Lown, 2011). 

The study found that women and men had different strengths in their financial wellbeing and capability, although the differences were generally not statistically significant. 

Factors contributing to financial wellbeing and capability

The research found that the factors contributing to pre-service teacher financial wellbeing are: 
• Financial behaviours – not borrowing for day-to-day expenses and active saving 
• Attitudinal/psychological traits – financial self-efficacy, impulse control 
• Financial knowledge.  

Family socialisation emerged as a strong theme in relation to building financial capability. A surprise finding was that many of the participants had few or no memories of financial education while they were at school, although it may be the case that they did not recognise such programs.

Financial education teacher self-efficacy

The research found that pre-service teacher efficacy to teach financial education was significantly lower than general teacher self-efficacy, with a gap around financial education instructional strategy (Tschannen-Moran et. al, 2017). Around half of the focus group participants were not confident about teaching financial education, indicating the need for improved access to professional development and teaching resources.

Pre-service teacher preparation

Based on the research findings, this thesis proposes a model that depicts the main elements of an environment to support pre-service teacher financial education self-efficacy. The model outlines three approaches delivering:
1. Personal financial education based on meaningful social contexts. 
2. Programs that build financial pedagogical knowledge and skill for a cross-curriculum implementation of financial education based on meaningful social and family contexts.
3. Programs that build teacher self-efficacy through mastery experiences and modelling by expert teachers.   

Research implications

This research has contributed to influential research by using the Financial Wellbeing Survey developed by Kempson and Poppe (2018) and applying it to an Australian pre-service teacher cohort. It is the first Australian research involving pre-service teachers that applies the broader conceptualisation of financial wellbeing and capability to establish whether financial wellbeing and capability impact financial education teacher self-efficacy. 

Policy and practice implications

This study proposes a model that Initial Teacher Education providers may use to better prepare pre-service teachers through personal financial education as well as a program that includes strategies to build efficacy to teach financial education. The study found that women and men have different strengths around financial wellbeing and capability and that these differences need to be accommodated to develop competent teachers of financial education. The study also has significant implications for national financial capability policy, including consolidating financial education within the curriculum, building a common conceptual framework and language around financial wellbeing and capability across the education field, and deploying financial education that draws on meaningful family and social contexts.