The Financial Literacy Microcredential is an online course that educators can sign up for at TC Academy. The microcrendial consists of a series of online modules that equip educators  to integrate the teaching of key financial concepts such as budgeting, credit, investing, risk, and insurance into their courses.  The online course and curriculum aim to:
-  enhance student understanding of public policy issues;

-  to foster the skills needed to analyze these issues;
-  and to cultivate the dispositions necessary to become engaged with these issues
as active and engaged citizens.

Although the cases and examples used in the course are based on the US, the materials and concepts apply across contexts and can be used or adapted for other countries. Please contact Thomas Hatch (hatch@tc.edu) if you are interested in exploring how to adapt these materials and the course for use with students outside the US.

The course grows out of the Cowin Financial Literacies Program and the Understanding Fiscal Responsibility Project (UFR) which developed a social studies and mathematics curriculum that focused on the federal budget, the federal debt, and budget deficit.  

NCREST served as the evaluator of the Understanding Fiscal Responsibility Project
(UFR), and the evaluation documented the implementation of the curriculum, looked at the impact that the curriculum had on students, and explored the factors that might contribute to students’ learning.

About the partner organization

Dr. Anand Marri and Dr. Robert Shand (NOTE link to their bios) led the development of the Financial Literacy Microcredential with the support of TC Academy.  Dr. Marri led the the Cowin Financial Literacies program and the UFR Project with a collaborative team from Teachers College that included faculty in the social studies mathematics programs, NCREST, and EdLab. The Cowin Financial Literacies Program was generously supported by a gift from Teachers College alumna and trustee Joyce B. Cowin. The Understanding Fiscal Responsibility Project was supported by grants from the Peter G. Petersen Foundation. 

Publications 

Marri, A. R., Ahn, M., Fletcher, J., Heng, T. T., & Hatch, T. (2012). Self-Efficacy of US
High School Teachers Teaching the Federal Budget, National Debt and Budget Deficit: A Mixed-Methods Case Study. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 11(2), 105-120. https://doi.org/10.2304/csee.2012.11.2.105