Conference Program

Financial education is a process through which citizens develop competencies that enable them to critically understand and interpret economic and social phenomena, make informed decisions, and act responsibly within their socio-economic context (Fornero & Lo Prete, 2023). In this regard, financial education contributes to personal and social well-being and supports the exercise of active citizenship (Andreatti et al., 2025; Parricchi, 2023).

The increasing complexity of the global context – characterized by rapid digitalization and the democratization of the financial system – has facilitated inclusion and access to services while also increasing citizens’ responsibilities and exposure to risks (Amagir et al., 2018; Kaiser & Lusardi, 2024). These processes, combined with generally low levels of competence observed worldwide, have made financial education a central focus of international policy (European Commission/OECD, 2023; OECD, 2020).

In Italy, financial education was recently introduced into the primary school curriculum as part of civic education (Gazzetta Ufficiale, 2024), with the Trentino-Alto Adige region anticipating national legislation in 2020. Despite its formal inclusion in the curriculum, operational challenges persist. In particular, curriculum design still tends to adopt an adult-centred approach, which overlooks children’s naïve economic theories and the family economic socialization processes that shape their development (Berti, 2004; Kardash et al., 2023; Zhao & Zhang, 2020). This perspective limits the ability of designing equitable and inclusive educational pathways that provide students with the tools to act responsibly as citizens.

This study presents the results of an empirical investigation conducted in the Province of Trento, involving a sample of 200 children aged 6, 8, and 10 and their parents. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods and aims to identify the factors that determine the starting point for designing financial education pathways, considering children’s naïve economic theories and family economic socialization processes. This paper focuses on quantitative data obtained through a parental questionnaire, which assessed financial competence (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2023), the degree of family economic socialization (frequency and content of economic conversations, children’s involvement in economic decisions, allowance management), and parents’ perspectives on the introduction of financial education in schools. Descriptive and exploratory analyses were conducted to examine differences across groups defined by socio-economic characteristics, outlining key profiles of family economic socialization. Additionally, multiple correspondence and multivariate analyses were performed to identify meaningful patterns and profiles among selected variables.

Preliminary results indicate that parents’ financial competence, family socialization processes, and attitudes toward school programs are significantly associated with gender, educational level, income, and prior experiences. Bivariate analyses indicate significant associations between socio-economic status and the content of family economic discussions: parents with high-SES more frequently address topics such as economic sustainability, banking roles, and pension planning, whereas low-SES families tend to emphasize basic saving practices. Overall, the findings confirm the central role of the family in the unequal transmission of economic competencies and the potential reproduction of intergenerational inequalities. These results highlight the importance of integrating children’s perspectives and family contexts into the design of equitable, inclusive, and developmentally appropriate financial education pathways.

Financial literacy initiatives may reinforce behavioural individualism and overlook structural inequalities, such as a lack of democratic participation and gender gaps in access, confidence and outcomes, thereby exacerbating epistemic injustice in economic and financial learning (Mizzi, 2021, 2025). This presentation addresses this gap by conceptualising ‘powerful financial knowledge’ that empowers students to think critically in financial matters beyond their everyday experience. Drawing on Young’s powerful knowledge framework (Young, 2014), this presentation discusses what constitutes powerful financial knowledge, how it can address gender disparities in financial literacy through critical pedagogies, and what curriculum innovations foster epistemic access for equitable economic agency. The approach synthesises empirical data from Maltese school business education classrooms with theoretical analysis. Findings reveal powerful financial knowledge in three expressions: deepening understanding of the financial world, enabling new thinking in financial matters, and developing students’ critical thinking in financial and economic issues. Teachers’ representations of pedagogical content knowledge promote reflective perspectives (Mizzi, 2024), but gender-neutral delivery can overlook vulnerabilities, such as over-reliance on credit among young women from low-income families.

Key insights include a proposed financial literacy programme that prioritises threshold concepts for epistemic justice (Mizzi, 2025), infuses critical civic education (including gender-aware elements), and provides teacher education in critical pedagogy. This frames financial education as a shared responsibility and enhances economic agency amid vulnerabilities. Implications encompass policy innovation (e.g., enhancing school economics provision) and teacher professionalisation by advancing epistemic equity and empowering diverse youth – including those facing gender disparities – for democratic economic participation.

We investigate the impact of a museum exhibition on the financial literacy of young people. The exhibition, titled “The Adventure of Money”, took place in Rome between October 2023 and June 2024. It offered a preview of Banca d’Italia’s upcoming Money Museum, which aims to stimulate interest in the main events in the history of money and finance. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the exhibition, we conducted a randomized control trial with about 600 students from 19 Italian upper secondary schools. The results show an improvement in the students’ financial knowledge, as evidenced by an increase of around one third in their initial financial competence scores. The results also show that the exhibition had a greater impact on female students. Finally, no learning decay was observed within the first month following the exhibition.

Financial education is increasingly recognized as a key prerequisite for social participation, as it equips individuals with the knowledge and competencies required to make informed and responsible economic decisions. Economic agency, in this sense, extends beyond the instrumental management of financial resources and represents a fundamental condition for autonomous and meaningful participation in contemporary societies. Individuals who understand economic interrelations are better equipped to articulate their interests reflectively, to critically assess societal developments, and to participate competently in public discourse. From a pedagogical perspective, social participation is closely linked to the development of democratic competencies. Active involvement in social, economic, and political processes strengthens democratic awareness, as individuals do not merely comprehend democratic principles cognitively but experience them in practice. In this sense, financial education can be understood as an integral component of comprehensive civic and political education, since economic competence forms an essential foundation for responsible democratic participation. Within this framework, the integrated education system emphasizes the importance of structured collaboration among multiple stakeholders in order to foster students’ engagement and support the development of participation competencies. Such collaboration may involve schools and universities, teacher education institutions, public authorities, financial institutions, civil society organisations, local community actors, and families.

Accordingly, this study is situated within that perspective and highlights the strategic cooperation between formal educational institutions (schools and universities), policy actors (such as school authorities and governmental bodies), and external stakeholders, particularly banks, operating within both informal and non-formal learning environments and embedded in structured collaborative networks. The integrated education system thus promotes multi-level partnerships in which formal education providers work together with external actors, especially financial institutions partnering with schools to deliver financial education programmes, in order to create coherent, practice-oriented, and socially embedded educational pathways.

In a small-scale regional context such as South Tyrol/Alto Adige, three fundamental forms of cooperation have been established through the formalization of agreements:

1. A research partnership between the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Economics.
2. A programme based on a “train-the-trainers” model involving university students and teachers.
3. A formal agreement between the National Bank, the local bank (Cassa di Risparmio), and the Italian school authority-already involving several school districts and soon to include the German school authority-providing structured training packages and educational formats.

In future research, and in line with a growing body of international literature, the research group aims to further investigate the effects of this initiative. In particular, the study seeks to explore whether economic literacy can be confirmed as a significant predictor of students’ engagement in civic participation. Moreover, ongoing data collection within this collaborative model will examine whether integrated educational strategies, linking formal curricula with informal learning experiences and peer-group-based economic socialization, are capable of strengthening students’ competencies in school settings which foster innovation. The extent to which such collaborative approaches contribute to sustainable educational and civic outcomes remains an open empirical question.

This paper presents an experience in Financial Education developed within the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education Sciences at the University of Molise, in collaboration with the Bank of Italy. The aim is to explore the value of combining theory and practice, considering university education as a laboratory for educational experimentation capable of generating concrete and transformative impacts in primary school contexts.

The hypothesis is that Financial Education can be configured as a pedagogical device capable of promoting awareness, participation, and social responsibility. The central focus of the experience is the transferability, in primary school settings, of the pathways experienced by future teachers.

Financial Education takes shape through authentic tasks, such as the collective management of a budget for a project or an event; shared reflection on personal spending priorities; discussion and debate on needs, desires, and the concept of saving in its multiple purposes; the use of role-playing activities to understand how supply and demand work and to practice early forms of conscious economic decision-making.

Even before the formal introduction of Financial Education into the curriculum and before our experience as university tutors, these themes were already integral to our teaching practice. Financial Education has indeed been adopted not as an additional content area, but as a cross-cutting perspective through which to interpret and organize meaningful learning experiences.

Through active methodologies, such as circle time, cooperative learning, storytelling, and problem solving, children were guided to engage in dialogue, negotiate, take responsibility, and reflect on the consequences of their decisions. Particular attention was also paid to the concept of social capital and to money understood as a tool oriented toward giving and solidarity.

In this context, Financial Education can be interpreted as a pedagogical practice aimed at enhancing children’s agency, supporting the development of critical and reflective skills necessary to understand the economic and social dynamics that shape individual and collective decision-making processes, and contributing to the promotion of their capacity for informed participation in economic and social life.

Within this framework, university teacher training assumes a strategic role in building a critical and responsible teaching professionalism, grounded in the integration of disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical-methodological competencies, and ethical-social responsibility, with the goal of designing educational practices capable of addressing early forms of educational disadvantage and exclusion, particularly in contexts characterized by socio-economic and cultural vulnerability.

To narrate and experience this process, therefore, means offering concrete tools to transform the classroom into a permanent laboratory of active citizenship, where educating about the value of money means educating about the value of choices— which ultimately shape the future of democracy itself.

The formal introduction of financial education into the Italian school system as part of the civic education curriculum must draw attention to the teachers tasked with delivering it, as they themselves belong to a vulnerable group; indeed, they have never studied economics or finance, either at school, at university, or even during their initial teacher training. And today, without specific training, financial education risks remaining merely an educational objective rather than a genuine teaching practice.

If we consider that the majority of Italian teachers are women and that women are among those with the least financial education—on average displaying lower levels of financial literacy and less confidence in their own financial skills—then this becomes a limiting factor in educating younger generations.

Consequently, in an education system staffed by teachers who, like many adults in contemporary society, have not received adequate financial education during their university or professional training, schools struggle to promote financial literacy among students.

It is necessary to recognise that teachers, too, require structured training programmes in economic and financial literacy.

The report highlights the need to ensure that teachers’ economic and financial training is not neglected, through two channels: the establishment of university-level professional development courses for serving teachers, aimed at developing basic economic skills and specific teaching abilities for financial education, and integrating economic and financial education content more systematically – than has been the case for at least a decade – into the initial training programmes for teachers across both school cycles.

Investing in teachers’ economic training means not only improving the effectiveness of financial education policies but also helping to reduce widespread economic and cultural vulnerabilities among the adult population. From this perspective, schools can become educational spaces capable of promoting critical thinking, independent decision-making, and democratic participation in economic and social life.

In Italy, the strategic importance of economic and financial education has been widely recognised at the political and institutional levels and has gradually established and consolidated itself over the past few decades. Financial education needs to be improved at school level and included in all university curricula, as well as within the lifelong learning perspective, to efficiently contribute to inclusion, equity, and democratic participation. Indeed, despite numerous interventions and training projects, including recent ones, which have led to improvements and expansion in financial literacy awareness, Italy continues to rank inadequately in European and international rankings.

Regarding schools, it should be noted that, from a legislative perspective, Legislative Decree No. 237 of December 23, 2016, later converted into Law No. 15 of February 17, 2017, clarified that financial education refers to the process through which individuals improve their understanding of financial instruments and products and develop the necessary skills. Subsequently, Law No. 21 of March 5, 2024, included financial education within civic education in schools. However, despite legislative recognition of the need to institutionalize financial, insurance, and social security education in school curricula, there is still a lack of adequate, systematic, coordinated, and consistent proposals on a scientific-cultural and pedagogical-didactic levels (Refrigeri, 2020, 2021).

The three-yearly OECD PISA survey on the skills of fifteen-year-olds in various literacy areas and, since 2012, also on Financial Literacy (FL), now in its fourth survey cycle, shows, in the latest report for 2022 (OECD, 2023) conducted in Italy in collaboration with the Bank of Italy and INVALSI, that fifteen-year-old students achieved an average score below the OECD average, not significantly differing from the results obtained in the two immediately preceding surveys.

Regarding the condition of adults, according to the most recent national (Lamboglia, Marinucci, Stacchini, and Vassallo, 2023) and international OECD (OECD/INFE, 2023) surveys, Italy unfortunately ranks among the last advanced countries in terms of basic financial skills.

The Bank of Italy also supports financial education through publications for adults (Banca d'Italia, 2023). As part of the Financial Education in Schools program, launched in agreement with the Ministry of Education, the Bank of Italy has created the series "I quaderni didattici della Banca d'Italia" (The Bank of Italy's Educational Notebooks), which includes the volumes "Tutti per uno economia per tutti!" (Bank of Italy, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d, 2023e, 2023f, 2023g) as the reference material for the Financial Education in Schools program. These volumes are therefore aimed at students and teachers of all levels in schools. However, there is a lack of widespread similar tools in universities, particularly for those students who do not pursue undergraduate, graduate, or post graduate degrees, etc., that include economics and finance in their curricula. I would hope that the interest and involvement, including that of the Bank of Italy, could broaden its scope to include all university students. This would be an important first step. A further literacy campaign should be implemented on a large scale, targeting the entire adult population, of all ages, genders, and socio-cultural conditions.

International scientific literature highlights the presence of a persistent gender gap in financial literacy. Numerous studies conducted by the OECD (2020) show that, in many countries, women achieve on average lower scores than men in financial literacy assessments.

The Italian context reflects a similar situation. Having a bank account, managing one’s money consciously, and making informed financial decisions: economic independence represents a fundamental condition for women’s freedom and emancipation. However, as reported by the Edufin Index 2025, women score on average five points lower than men in financial competencies—specifically 54 points compared to 59. Gender stereotypes, according to which women are perceived as less capable of possessing and managing financial resources, significantly contribute to this gap. These misconceptions affect girls from the early years of schooling, when they begin to develop lower confidence in their mathematical and financial abilities (Agasisti, 2022).

The literature agrees that this gap cannot be attributed to innate differences in abilities, but rather to structural and socio-cultural factors.

Within this framework, financial education emerges as a tool of empowerment capable of acting not only at the cognitive level but also at the social and cultural levels. It goes beyond the mere transmission of technical knowledge by fostering the development of decision-making skills, informed attitudes, and confidence in one’s capacity to manage financial resources. International studies show that targeted educational programs can positively influence behaviours such as savings planning, debt management, participation in financial markets, and retirement preparation. In particular, they can support women in achieving greater economic autonomy and reduce conditions of vulnerability related to financial dependence or job instability (Bottazzi & Lusardi, 2021).

From a pedagogical perspective, this implies designing educational pathways that are attentive to the diverse life experiences and social conditions of boys and girls. In this direction, the theoretical contribution of Paulo Freire emphasizes the importance of dialogic and contextualized learning processes that foster the development of critical awareness of the economic and social structures shaping everyday life (1971).

In light of these considerations, schools represent a privileged context for promoting financial education from the earliest stages of the educational pathway (Parricchi, 2023), as also recommended by the OECD (2020). Within this perspective lies the experience developed within the Primary Teacher Education program at the University of Trieste, carried out in collaboration with the Banca d'Italia as part of the Edufin project. Introduced from the first year of compulsory indirect practicum, the initiative aims to support the design of multidisciplinary teaching activities focused on financial education. The project pursues a dual objective: on the one hand, to reduce the potential gap in economic and financial competencies among future teachers; on the other, to prepare them to address these topics in a conscious and pedagogically effective way within early childhood and primary education.

This contribution therefore aims to reflect on the role of initial teacher education as a strategic lever for promoting a more equitable and inclusive financial culture, capable of counteracting gender inequalities from an early stage.

In contemporary societies, where individuals are increasingly required to mobilise knowledge and competences to manage their financial resources and make informed decisions (Martin, 2002), institutional and academic interest in financial literacy has grown substantially. Financial literacy is widely recognised as a key lever for the development of financial capability and, consequently, for the achievement of financial well-being (CFPB, 2015; Sherraden, 2013; Willis, 2022). As a result, financial education initiatives have proliferated and, in some countries – such as Italy – financial education is scheduled to be incorporated into school curricula, starting from primary education.

However, although processes of financial socialisation begin in early childhood (Bottazzi & Lusardi, 2020; Drever et al., 2015; Rinaldi, 2015), educational proposals addressing core financial concepts – such as risk, uncertainty, time and value – remain rare in pre-school settings. Moreover, the literature lacks experimental studies assessing the impact of play-based financial education interventions on sufficiently large samples of children aged three to five (Gerasimova et al., 2022; Kamber et al., 2024; Ramli et al., 2022).

A research project currently in its conceptualisation and planning phase is therefore presented, pending the securing of the resources required for its implementation, in order to obtain feedback and advice to support its optimal development.

The project seeks to evaluate the impact of financial education on the attitudes and behaviours of pre-school children. More specifically, it examines whether play-based activities targeting children aged three to five can leave a lasting imprint on financial socialisation processes, fostering more virtuous developments in attitudes and behaviours. The core research question is: do children who have experienced play-based financial education show, one or two years later, systematically different attitudes and behaviours compared with those who have not?

Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the study will be conducted in partnership with Reggio Children Foundation, which promotes the Reggio Emilia Approach internationally, and in collaboration with pedagogists and teachers. The sample will consist of approximately 5,000 children attending nursery schools adopting the same educational approach but located in four markedly different socio-economic, cultural, technological and financial contexts: an Italian province, where such schools are public and attended by children from all kinds of family backgrounds; the cities of Milan and Paris, where they are private and subject to access constraints; and San Francisco, where they are even elitist.

Within each context, schools will be divided into three homogeneous groups based on average parental financial literacy: one will serve as the control group, while the other two will constitute treatment groups (with variations in timing and frequency of the proposed activities). The findings are expected to confirm differences in financial socialisation across contexts; a key objective, however, is to assess whether structured interventions in early years allow children to co-construct knowledge on concepts that can be linked to financial literacy.