Reframing Financial Literacy: Global Currencies as Gateways to Critical Global Citizenship in Mathematics Education

• In Event: From financial literacy to professional learning: Transforming educational practices and learning environments

Proposal

Introduction: Context and Issues
In a world increasingly fractured by economic inequality, systemic injustice, and cultural disconnection, re-examining the role of financial education is critical. Financial literacy (FL)—often treated as a technical life-skills—carries deeper implications for how individuals understand fairness, power, and global interdependence. Since 2020, Ontario’s mathematics curriculum has included FL as a mandatory component from Grades 1 to 8, expanding to Grade 9 in 2021. Yet, FL is frequently reduced to concepts such as budgeting, saving, and interest, often delivered in neutral ways that feel abstract, depersonalized, or disconnected from students' lived experiences. This concern is especially relevant in Ontario's diverse classrooms, where students come from a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, each with distinct financial practices and dialogues at home. As a result, there exists a need for school curricula to actively address FL in ways that are inclusive, culturally relevant, and empowering (Matheson et al., 2023).
Nevertheless, many teachers feel underprepared to teach FL due to limited accessible resources, inadequate professional development, and minimal curricular guidance (Henderson et al., 2021; Matheson et al., 2020). Without support, FL is often sidelined or taught superficially. Compounding this is its dominant framing through a neoliberal lens—emphasizing personal responsibility while ignoring structural forces that shape financial outcomes (Arthur, 2011; Dunn, 2023). This risks reinforcing deficit narratives, particularly for marginalized students, and overlooks critical conversations about wealth, power, and equity (Soroko, 2023).
In response, this proposal explores how mathematical inquiry into global currency systems can provide a rich and accessible entry point for teacher candidates to reframe financial literacy through the lens of global citizenship, cultural awareness, and critical inquiry. By engaging with currencies from around the world—including the language, symbolism, economic design, and historical context represented on bills and coins—teacher candidates begin to see how mathematics education can foster dialogue across cultural divides, challenge economic inequities, and cultivate empathy and understanding. In a world increasingly marked by division, this approach positions financial education not just as a technical skill, but as a transformative practice that can promote equity, solidarity, and peace.

Research Question
How might exploring global currency systems-inform teacher candidates’ practice of global citizenship?

Theoretical/Conceptual Framework
Our research is informed by critical global citizenship. Global citizenship requires citizens to recognize social injustice and attempt to correct it by responsible, individual, democratic action (le Roux & Swanson, 2021). As math education practitioners and researchers, our role is to recognize unequal power relations and the importance of contextual differences, while rejecting the idea that the global North–or any single locality–defines a universal norm (le Roux & Swanson, 2021, p. 332). Our activity encourages teacher candidates to examine currencies from around the world which encourage exploration of various cultures globally. This pluralistic representation of currencies promotes decolonial cosmopolitanism by foregrounding diverse local knowledge and perspectives. Participants cultivate contextual knowledge of global cultures and demonstrate an informed understanding of local histories.

Research Context and Methodology
This study was conducted within a teacher education program in Ontario, Canada, a part of mathematics courses for elementary and middle school teacher candidates. The research spanned six cohorts, engaging pre-service teachers in collaborative, data-informed discussions designed to foster critical thinking and global awareness through mathematical inquiry.
A total of 200 participants were organized into 43 small groups, each consisting of four to six members. Each group was asked to respond to a set of six discussion questions, accompanied by a variety of data representations, including bar graphs, pie charts, and tables. These materials prompted participants to analyze and reflect on aspects of international currencies, including the design and location of banknote printing, color schemes, denominations, currency systems, and linguistic features.
Participants' written responses from the group discussions were collected, digitized, and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. This analytic approach allowed themes to emerge organically from the data, without the constraints of pre-existing categories (Braun & Clarke, 2008; Byrne, 2021). Grounding the analysis in the participants’ lived experiences enabled the identification of contextually rich and authentic insights into how teacher candidates engage with sociocultural and geopolitical dimensions of mathematical data. Through this process, the study positions mathematics education as a powerful site for global, critical engagement in teacher preparation.

Findings
The thematic analysis of teacher candidates’ collaborative discussions showed understandings of how currency design reflects sociocultural, political, and mathematical dimensions. Participants interpreted multilingual inscriptions on banknotes as symbols of national identity, colonial history, inclusion, and global engagement, especially in contexts like the Euro that require cultural and linguistic pluralism. Currency systems and subunits sparked reflections on number sense and place value, with participants highlighting their pedagogical potential in developing mathematical reasoning through culturally responsive practices. A wide range of denominations were seen as indicators of economic and political systems, with currency values understood in relation to inflation, purchasing power, governance, and historical context. Discussions on colours of banknotes revealed its importance for accessibility, security, national symbolism, and aesthetic appeal, particularly in relation to cultural associations to wealth and visual clarity. Print locations prompted critical inquiry into global interdependence and colonial legacies, as outsourcing banknote production was linked to economic trust and geopolitical dynamics. Finally, participants viewed imagery on banknotes—such as architecture, landscapes, and notable figures—as powerful representations of national pride and historical narratives, while also critiquing the underrepresentation of women and marginalized histories. These findings underscore the potential of mathematics education to serve as a platform for critical, global inquiry through the analysis of real-world data.

Conclusions and Contributions
This study positions mathematics education as a platform for global citizenship by engaging teacher candidates in critical analysis of currency design. Participants connected mathematical concepts to sociocultural, historical, and geopolitical contexts, while also deepening their understanding of financial literacy concepts such as currency systems, purchasing power, and denominations. The findings suggest that integrating a culturally responsive approach in financial literacy can enhance pre-service teachers’ ability to foster critical thinking and global awareness in their future classrooms. Future research should examine how such approaches influence long-term teaching practices and student engagement across diverse educational settings.

Authors

• Jin A Jung, O.I.S.E. University of Toronto

• Rosalia Cha, OISE/University of Toronto