Genius Hour Blog Post 3 - Sept 29th

Last week I looked at Ontario's strategies to incorporate financial literacy into the curriculum. This week I will look at another province (British Columbia) and another country for comparisons.

COMPARING TO ONTARIO

LINKS I EXPLORED:

British Columbia

National Report Card on Financial Literacy 
Learn Magazine: Financial Literacy in BC

Canada (National Level)

National Strategy for Financial Literacy 

Finland

Federation of Finish Financial Services

Europe

Eurofinas E-Publication on Financial Education


There is a presence of financial literacy focus in British Columbia and Canada as a whole on a national level.

Finland;s Federation of Finish Financial Services in an organization that actively pursues the continued presence of financial education through a student's life. The EUROFINAS document above is a long report about the importance of financial education in many European countries. Although documents in english are hard to come by, it is clear that financial literacy is also of importance overseas.

What I have found through this research is that Ontario actually takes its financial literacy resources very seriously. There is a lot of resources and tools available for educators and parents to help their children with financial education.

This week I also discovered a wonderful resource for educators and parents called Inspire Financial Learning. This is a tool offered by the Ontario Teacher's Federation that supports teachers, students, parents and guardians with effective strategies and resources to teach financial literacy. It has many videos and lessons about various personal finance topics.

REFLECTION

This week I enhanced my personal learning in the area of educator research. I was able to go outside the traditional zone of Ontario and explore how Canada wants to prepare it's teachers for success. I am positive I can apply this research technique to other subjects/disciplines and find similar results. This will help to make me a more informed educator and allow me to find the best materials for my students. Along the way, I was even able to find more reliable Ontario material as well.

The next step is to look into ways that we can assess financial literacy. Without assessment we can't see how effective our current programs are. If we don't know our areas that need improvement, then we can't work at improving them.