Preparation of Future Teachers at Vocational Secondary Schools and Financial Literacy

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to find out how to motivate future teachers of vocational subjects to implement financial literacy as a natural part of the teaching process. If a teacher does not have a positive attitude towards economics, it is challenging for him to include the proper activities in the field of financial literacy into the process of teaching vocational subjects. The education of future teachers in this field has a wide scope for improvement and implementation of new trends. The purpose of the paper is to examine the initial experiences of introducing the topic Financial Literacy into the training of future teachers in vocational subjects at secondary vocational schools which are taught at the Technical University in Košice (the course of additional pedagogical study). Financial Literacy was the part of a compulsory subject called Didactics in Vocational Subjects, which aimed to determine the awareness of students about the document The National Standard of Financial Literacy in a sample of 67 students. The participants used the document and its attachments in practice. Our results point out that most students did not know about the existence of the document and that none of the students had ever worked with the document before. An incompatibility between the document and its attachments makes difficult to implement financial literacy into the teaching process at secondary vocational schools. In the paper, we present an overview of some methods that shift the problem of financial literacy to a practical level.