Document Type
Thesis
First Faculty Advisor
Leila Zbib
Second Faculty Advisor
Ryan Sonder
Keywords
finance; literacy; education; learning
Publisher
Bryant University
Rights Management
CC - BY - NC - ND
Abstract
The purpose of the study is to understand what students currently know regarding financial literacy, what learning style they use in the classroom, and how to fuse the two into a simple and informational version of financial literacy education. Financial literacy education can be used to increase household savings for retirement, personal financial goals, and risk management purposes. By joining the concept of UDL and Financial Literacy Education, each obstacle listed can be improved upon. Learning styles focus attention onto three different approaches to teaching that are based in auditory, visual, and kinesthetic pedagogies. UDL focuses on curating individual learning curriculum based on multiple means of engagement, representation, and action & expression. Both aim to foster the most effective form of student’s learning. Focusing the research on financial literacy education can be achieved through in-depth analyses of past case studies and by conducting surveys amongst extreme users of financial services. In the study, sample questions are geared towards understanding an individual’s proficiency of financial literacy, understanding their learning styles, and designing the most effective approach to teaching fundamentals of finance. Results suggest that fusing learning styles into financial literacy education contributes towards student comprehension of finances. Students utilize the visual approach most, which may be due to the increase in digitalization and overreliance on virtual devices.
Comments
The work was made under the direction of the Honors Program at Bryant University. It is intended to draw a link between the wicked problems of education and financial literacy by providing a universally designed framework to understanding finances.