Finance is a vital part of everybody’s life and dealing effectively with a wide range of financial challenges requires a level of financial literacy that many people lack. The OECD defines financial literacy to be a combination of financial ‘knowledge, awareness, skills, attitudes, and behaviour in order to make effective decisions across a range of financial contexts, to improve the financial well-being of individuals and society, and to enable participation in economic life’ (OECD 2014, 33). A high level of financial literacy contributes to a person’s financial stability, independence and well-being. People with a higher level of financial literacy know comparatively more financial products, use more sources of information for their financial decisions and have a nest egg set aside for a rainy day. They are less inclined to take out loans for short-lived purposes such as current bills, spontaneous purchases, gifts or a holiday (Silgoner et al. 2015, Stolper and Walter 2017, Lusardi 2019).

Consequently, improving financial education at schools is at the heart of most national strategies all around the world. However, considering the high diversity of students, there is little empirical evidence on the didactic adequacy and effectiveness of financial education initiatives. In order to provide a tailored financial education program that really meets the needs of the respective audiences, an innovative initiative of training students of business education to become financial education coaches at schools has been developed at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). As coaches, they offer to teach financial education workshops at schools, customised to the needs of the students while taking the teaching conditions at the respective school into account. Teachers at secondary schools may request workshops within the framework of the initiative on the website of the Institute for Business Education. In addition to their contact details, school and class, the teachers provide information on the desired topic, the desired length and the desired time period of the workshop. Accordingly, coaches develop an individual workshop for each request from a school or teacher.

The program has proven to be attractive not only for WU students who wish to enhance their financial knowledge and skills as well as their teaching abilities, but also for schools and teachers alike that aim to foster the level of financial education of their students. In creating a tangible impact in schools and society at large, the initiative contributes to a well-blended mix of third mission initiatives of a university. Yet, the program not only provides effective financial education for schools under consideration of the prevailing teaching conditions, but has also been evaluated from the very beginning of its implementation in order to closely examine the acceptance and effectiveness of the initiative. The actual effectiveness of the program has been assessed by means of an evaluation study that analyses the impact of the initiative on financial education coaches, teachers and students at schools while also analysing its recognition by society.

Subsequently, this contribution presents the initiative, its theoretical framework and the evaluation results on the didactic adequacy and the effectiveness of the program, in particular its impact on research and teaching.

The principles of the triangulation method were applied to evaluate the financial education initiative from various perspectives. Triangulation as a research method refers to the combination of different data, methods, theoretical perspectives and/or researchers (Döring/Bortz 2016). In this case, the evaluation study used data and methodological triangulation to evaluate the initiative of the financial education coaches at WU from the perspectives of all participants by applying different methods of empirical research (Denzin 1973, Cohen et al. 2017). Following the principles of method triangulation, a combination of qualitative and quantitative survey methods was selected in order to be able to infer results from the data that can be used for the further development of the initiative (Flick 2011, Döring/Bortz 2016). Therefore, the students were surveyed quantitatively by means of evaluation questionnaires, while guided interviews were conducted with the teachers and the financial education coaches. This mixed method approach allowed a combination of different methods and different types of data as well as the evaluation of different perspectives for a comprehensive and in-depth evaluation. The content structure was comparable across all the survey instruments. First, the participants were asked to express their assessments of financial education topics in general, which fostered the identification of general results on the importance and relevance of financial education. After this introduction, the workshops were evaluated, first by looking at the overall perception and at organizational aspects. Subsequently, the content and the relevance of the workshops for the students' future life were assessed in more detail. The sample comprised 360 pupils who participated in 20 workshops that took place at 13 different Viennese schools. For conducting interviews with the teachers of these students, all teachers who had requested the workshops were contacted. While 13 teachers were asked for interviews, unfortunately only three of them were willing to give an interview, even after repeated requests. In addition, all financial education coaches who held at least one workshop between November 2022 and January 2023 were interviewed. In total, 18 financial education coaches were interviewed, 14 of whom are female and four male. For the teachers and students, the evaluation was carried out verbally-interpretatively within the framework of qualitative content analysis according to Kuckartz (2012).

The results of the study show that the overall objective of the initiative is achieved: Students, teachers and financial education coaches give high ratings to the initiative and signal that they profit from it. The three perspectives overlap on experiencing financial education to be important and interesting. The three groups also share the belief that financial education should already be taught in school and, thus, anchored in the curriculum. The students feel that financial education is very relevant for their private everyday life, but they highlight that they receive too little financial education in school in order to become a responsible citizen. Teachers largely feel unable to teach financial education topics themselves and, therefore, willingly turn to the financial education coaches' initiative at WU. As far as the didactic approach is concerned, the study results show that lessons in a workshop format with short theory elements and longer application and exercise phases achieve the highest learning outcome of the students. Creative and complex methods with interactive and playful elements on financial education topics help students to recognize the relevance of the topics in their everyday lives and motivate them to participate in the workshops with high interest. Consequently, the initiative contributes to the positive development of society and, thus, to the third mission of WU by promoting financial education among students and teachers. At the same time, students of business education profit from the enrichment of their studies by boosting their own financial literacy and gaining more experience in teaching at schools. In addition, the initiative helps to collect data on financial literacy in Austria and to learn more about the levels of financial literacy among the young. In this way, the initiative has a threefold positive impact on teaching, research and the university’s third mission.

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