Genius Hour Blog Post 4 - Oct 6th

Today I looked at measuring the effectiveness of financial literacy in Canada and elsewhere. I also am making suggestions as my final discoveries for my Genius Hour project.

MEASURING FINANCIAL LITERACY

Canada has a tool used for assessing financial literacy and personal finance amongst the adult population. In 2009, Stats Canada administered the Canadian Financial Capability Survey. The survey covered key topics such as investments and budgeting.

One of the best documents I found during my research was a very large document produced by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This report looks at how participants, 18 and over, answered a "Financial Literacy Core Questionnaire" in 14 different countries. The report provides a plethora of detailed information and breakdowns of every aspect of the questionnaire. There is so much detailed information that I could take from the results, but the most important thing is the knowledge that a tool to measure financial literacy exists.

I then discovered the OECD has almost an identical study and questionnaire but for students. Since Canada only offered it's questionnaire to adults, 18 and over, I believe there is a gap to be filled. This gap demands a questionnaire to given to students to assess the effectiveness of our current situations. I have used the questionnaire as part of the final discovery for my Genius Hour project which can be found here.

REFLECTION

Canada is not included in the OECD assessment of 15 year old students, so it is difficult to say exactly where Canadians students are at. It could be extremely enlightening to administer the test in a small sample of students. I also think this opens up the topic of how we assess financial literacy in our classrooms. We have all these tools to use and suggestions to follow, yet on the report cards we lack a space to recognize achievements or needs for improvement.

This week I learned/was reminded that I enjoy studies. In university, I was in a program that was heavily research oriented and enjoyed looking up peer-reviewed articles. My explorations this week served as a flashback to my explorations of populations, sample sizes, questionnaires and results.

From here, I will be proposing a final product for my Genius Hour project. I believe that my initial goal of creating a new course may have been to adventurous. I instead will try to propose a more realistic and simple beginning step. From there, I will offer further explorations that include the creation of a mandatory course for high school students.