Understanding Chinese students’ success in the PISA financial literacy: A praxeological analysis of financial numeracy

Abstract

The goal of this article was to investigate how Chinese mathematics curriculum policies and textbook tasks could help explain the results obtained by Chinese students in the 2012 and 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy exams. Inspired by the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, we conducted a praxeological analysis of financial numeracy tasks from middle school textbooks and the PISA. We conceptualized the term financial numeracy as the use, production, and communication of mathematical information in financial situations. The analysis permitted us to contrast the solution to PISA tasks with that of financial tasks from middle school mathematics textbooks. Our results show that, despite the lack of attention to mathematics in the curriculum policies for financial literacy, the mathematics textbooks seem to support the performance of students in the PISA by (a) incorporating more mathematically complex content, (b) tackling equivalent financial concepts, (c) providing students with enough time to consolidate their understanding throughout middle school, and (d) designing pedagogy that revisits these concepts over the years. The implications of this study inform mathematics education research and practice. If we are to incorporate financial literacy in mathematics curricula, this process should be done with intentionality and in connection to multiple mathematical concepts and processes.