Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE - Universität Bielefeld)
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Misselling as a New Topic of Financial Education? A Didactic Analysis of Investment Advise after the Financial Crisis
Get PDFPersonal financial investments are, as a matter of course, a topic of economic education because they are a life situation which is inherently economical. In contrast, faulty advising in banks which has become focussed upon due to the extent it has played a part in the recent financial crisis is mentioned neither in curricula nor in educational text books. Numerous private funds have been exposed as unprofitable investments. One reason for this problem is to be found in the marketing staff of the banks who did not invest their customer’s funds securely enough – and the customers did not notice it. What conclusions can be drawn from this for general financial education after the financial crisis? The economic education has failed to address the topic of “faulty advising in banks” as well. On the basis of categorical economic didactics the following contribution will analyse whether one has an exemplary case here upon which students can win generalized, transferable insights. In this context, the topic of personal financial investments will be classified in an efficient manner and the risk of opportunism in advising situations will be analysed with the help of the positive principal-agent theory. The results of this analysis of informational asymmetries within financial markets give direction to the development and revision of curricula in the didactics of economic education. With the following article a sustainable theoretical fundament will be created to underscore the obligatory inclusion of this topic in curricula as well as its realisation for target groups in school text books
Editorial: Social Science Education in the Financial Risk Society
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Categorial Conflict Didactics as Paradigm of Civic Education
No full textRudolf Engelhard presents a lesson model in his article How to Deal with Party Politics at School? that dates back to the 1960s, when civic education was revived in the Federal Republic of Germany (West-Germany). In order to improve civic education at school, the former Ministers of Education of German states reached a joint decision on the new subject. This was as a reaction against the first massive scribbling of Nazi propaganda since the end of World War II. Therefore, a new subject in secondary education was introduced to serve this purpose. This subject was called Sozialkunde1 (civic education) or Gemeinschaftskunde2 (social studies)
Economics as a Social Science in French lycées :A Programme Shaped by the Evolution of a School Discipline
Get PDFSince the end of the 1960s, courses in economics have become established in French lycées for pupils aged approximately 16 to 18 as part of both the general and technological (services) streams. There are no other specific programmes in economics at the other levels of the school system. In lower secondary schools (collèges), which cater for children aged between 11 and 15, economic phenomena are presented in a somewhat descriptive manner during history and geography lessons. These descriptions introduce children to an economic vocabulary that includes terms such as GDP, productivity, inflation, growth and development. However, the acquisition of this vocabulary does not lead on to the teaching of any real economic arguments, nor of economic concepts or theories in the strict sense. Economics as just defined in not taught in the vocational streams either. The aim of this article is to characterise the teaching of economics that is provided in the general streams of French upper secondary schools as part of a subject called Economic and Social Sciences (ESS). It is here that economics teaching is most heavily concentrated; furthermore, it is the only one of the two economics programmes in French lycées for which curriculum studies exist. The article will show that, despite the considerable changes it has undergone, this programme has retained the critical and socially aware approach that has been present since it was first established. It was by no means evident that such an approach, inspired originally by the work of historians of the Annales school, would be adopted, even less retained, since it goes against the grain of developments in economics at university level, both in French universities and internationally, during the two decades between 1980 and the year 2000 (LeVan Lemesle 1983; Le Merrer 1990). During this period, the economics taught in universities became less descriptive and more formalised and moved away from the other social sciences. Economists have become increasingly adept at manipulating models and have ceased to view economic and social problems from an historical perspective (Hogdson et al. 2009). The teaching of economic and social sciences in French schools has not followed this course and has been challenged on numerous occasions, most notably by academic economists and employers’ representatives. The fact that its original critical approach has been maintained is due in no small measure to action taken by teachers
“Greedy Buyers, Amoral Speculators and Lacking State Control” - Pupils Conceptions about the Crisis and their Relevance for Political and Economic Learning
Get PDFThis article exemplarily illustrates pupils‘ concepts of the Economic and Financial Crisis. It is especially interesting to examine in how far pupils assign relevance to current crisis phenomena for their daily lives and how these are perceived and explained. Diagnosing and analysing the available concepts is a prerequisite for planning Politics lessons. In the politic and economic classroom researching pupils‘ concepts and paying attention to them can help to show student orientated ways of learning
Social Knowledge for Financial Markets
Get PDFFinancial literacy is an important issue today, but it is directed/limited to improve the practical skills of people taking financial markets and their present working for granted. However, financial markets are social institutions and social processes involving network relations as well as rules and norms. Globalization has resulted in a dominating role of financial markets over the economy with importance for the transformation of capitalistic society. The sociological perspectives on financial markets have relevance also for the present crisis for which several explanations have been suggested. Most explanations overlook, however, the process of disembedding of the financial markets from the societal context, which is represented by the reliance on a specific kind of knowledge. To illustrate the need for reintegrating financial markets in the economy and making them more responsive to societal concerns, financial knowledge requires to be embedded into social knowledge about the function of financial markets for society, the importance of norms and the social character of marketsFinanzerziehung ist ein wichtiges Anliegen in der Gegenwart, aber die „finanzielle Alphabetisierung“ beschränkt sich auf die Vermittlung praktischen Wissens, ohne die Finanzmärkte und ihr Funktionieren zu hinterfragen. Aber Finanzmärkte sind soziale Institutionen und soziale Prozesse, die Netzwerkbeziehungen sowie Regeln und Normen umfassen. Die Globalisierung resultierte in einer dominierenden Rolle des Finanzsystems im Verhältnis zur Wirtschaft und mit Implikationen für die Transformation der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft. Die soziologischen Perspektiven auf Finanzmärkte sind auch für die gegenwärtige Krise relevant, die verschieden zu erklären versucht wird. Diese Erklärungen übersehen jedoch vielfach den Prozess der Entbettung der Finanzmärkte aus den gesellschaftlichen Kontexten, der sich auch durch die Betonung einer spezifischen Art von Wissen darstellt. Um die Notwendigkeit für die Reintegration der Finanzmärkte in die Wirtschaft und für ihre Verantwortlichkeit für gesellschaftliche Belange verständlich zu machen, bedarf es der Einbettung des finanztechnischen Wissens in soziales Wissen über die Funktion der Finanzmärkte in der Gesellschaft, die Bedeutung von Normen und den sozialen Charakter von Märkten
Controversy in the Classroom. The Democratic Power of Discussion
Get PDF“One warm day in the spring of 2006, I visited a U.S. History class at a public charter school in a large Midwestern city …” (p. 1) This is the beginning of Diana Hess’ book about the methods of democratic discussion in classroom and it indicates its strong narrative quality including several teacher portraits and scenic vignettes. The book is winner of the 2009 “Exemplary Research in Social Studies” award from the National Council for the Social Studies. In an interview with Kerry G. Hill for the campus journal (School of Education, University of Wisconsin http://campusconnections.education.wisc.edu/post/LEARNING-Diana-Hess.aspx) the author roots the book’s content back to her own biography and socialization: While growing up in northern Illinois, Diana Hess recalls members of her family engaging in lively, raucous political discussions. “Disagreement wasn’t a negative thing,” she remembers
Two Kinds of Political Awakening in the Civic Education Classroom. A Comparative Argumentation Analysis of the “Constitutional Debates” of Two “Found-a-Village” Projects with 8th Graders
Get PDFThis article proposes an adaption of the Toulmin model of argumentation as a congenial method to investigate interactive political learning processes. The interactive learning environment is provided by the “Found-a-Village” project, where students simulate to establish their own social and political system. I will start my essay by introducing the “genetic” village-setting which works as a trigger for the formation of political judgment and conflict resolution skills. Then, I will define claims, grounds, warrants and premises as basic parts of Toulmin’s model. After presenting six types of politically relevant warrants, I will present a four-level-model for the analysis of political learning processes, distinguishing private, public, institutional and systemic perspectives on politics. Later on, I apply this model by comparing two quite different classes during the initial phase of their village-projects: While the “public” class uses the simulation to seriously negotiate their political values, the second class takes a fairly playful and “private” time-out from typical instruction. Both classes, at a different speed, undergo a continual development from unfounded claims and inadequate arguments to the reflection of their own and opposed political value-orientations. The analysis of implicit parts of individual argumentation confirms the method to be helpful for teachers’ diagnosis skills
Who Actually Sets the Criteria for Social Studies Literacy? The National Core Curricula and the Matriculation Examination as Guidelines for Social Studies Teaching in Finland in the 2000’s
Get PDFThe issue of how to define the content of social studies literacy has become topical in Finland in the 2000’s in a new way as a result of social studies having been instituted as an independent subject in upper secondary school and in basic education. Freedom from the ties confining social studies in the role of a subdivision of the subject history has entailed a need to profile social studies and also to problematize the parametres of social studies literacy more clearly and consciously than before. However the question remains as to who defines the content of social studies literacy. In this article we will argue that in Finland today the most central role in this respect is being played not by the national core curricula where the competence aims of social studies teaching are rather vague, but by the social studies exam in the national matriculation examination. This is not necessarily a bad situation in terms of the outcome but it is noteworthy that the task of operationalizing social studies literacy is here as if “outsourced” to a small group of social science and social studies education experts who design social studies exam questions, whereas the authority responsible for developing the national core curricula only sanctions very general descriptive objectives for social studies teaching