The EFORBIS project aims to educate first-year teacher training students about finance and, through dual teaching practice, qualify them to implement financial education in schools later on. In the first phase, first-year teacher training students are made aware of the challenges of financial decision-making based on their individual life situations. A large proportion of this group are women, who are considered vulnerable in terms of financial education. This group receives special attention in the project. In a second phase, future teachers will be trained to teach financial education in schools by gaining their own experience in making independent financial decisions through project work. Social constructivism and constructivist didactics according to Kersten Reich (cf. Reich 2012) serve as the basis for the didactic design of the seminar. The research question is: How will a seminar concept for financial education for teacher training students in the early stages of their studies be designed, based on evidence-based research findings regarding its didactic implementation and analysis of its impact?

The inconsistency in the anchoring of financial education (because of the federalist education system) leads to very heterogeneous prior knowledge among students in the early stages of their studies (cf. Happ et al. 2021, p. 48). The early stages of study are a phase associated with complex transitions and, in this context, with many young people making their first financial decisions of greater significance. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that financial problems are often cited as a reason for dropping out of university (cf. Heublein et al. 2012, p. 11; Heublein et al. 2022, p. 13).

At the same time, financial education requires professional teachers as multipliers to support financial education in schools and implement it in educational practice (cf. Compen et al. 2019, p. 15; Urban et al. 2020, p. 22). This requires a concept based on university teaching methodology that is committed to good teaching practice and considers not only the everyday world of students but also teaching practice, thus offering space for reflection on teaching and opportunities for dual teaching practice. In this way, approaches can be experienced and reflected upon for use in school practice.

The OECD/INFE (2016) Competency Framework serves as a reference model for financial education within the scope of the project. This provides a framework model that refers to the content areas of “Money and Transactions,” “Planning and Managing,” “Risk and Reward,” and “Financial Landscape.” The competency framework model proves to be particularly comprehensive and differentiated in terms of integrating different content areas and competency categories at the individual, societal, and systemic levels. However, according to Kaminski and Friebel, financial education encompasses “not only the consumer perspective but also the corporate perspective” (Kaminski/Friebel, 2012, p. 6), as this is the only way to enable “a multi-perspective examination of finance, financial products, and the related institutional framework” (ebd.).

With regard to entrepreneurial thinking and action, the project draws on the EntreComp competence framework for entrepreneurial skills (cf. Bacigalupo et al. 2016). This follows a broad understanding of entrepreneurship education, which is geared towards promoting entrepreneurial thinking and action. Individuals should be empowered to make reflective, independent decisions based on their own initiative and to translate ideas and solution strategies into action based on problems, thereby taking actual action and experiencing self-efficacy, which is also important in the context of financial literacy. In addition, the entrepreneurial aspect enables the integration of additional dimensions of action (marketing, human resources, etc.) and thus offers a more comprehensive view of the consequences of individual decisions and (financial) system interrelationships.

Since one of the aims of the research projects was to strengthen student’s financial self-efficacy in addition to their financial literacy, the OECD/INFE-Framework was to be supplemented with content from the EntreComp model, among other things. The multidimensional scaling (MDS) method was used for this purpose. In MDS, qualitative material – in this case, competence descriptions – is structed and then systematically analyzed (cf. Griessmair et al., 2011, p. 1064). “In a procedure of iterative comparisons, the qualitative material is aggregated to categories based on shared meaning” (ebd.). The 15 categories, created by MDS, were summarized in a competency framework for financial education for students. This competency framework serves as a guide for determining of the seminar content. The seminar concept is based on the “constructive alignment” model according to Biggs and Tang (cf. Wildt/Wildt, 2011, p. 9). As described above, the learning outcomes are defined by the newly developed competency framework. Teaching/learning activities and examination formats will be designed based on this framework with regard to situations, requirements, and tasks. The seminar comprises two phases: In the first phase, the student’s financial literacy will be promoted. In the second phase the method of double teaching practice is added. In this phase, students are to be sensitized and empowered to implement financial education in their later teaching practice. In doing so, they work on case studies that can be passed on to students in a modified form. The seminar will be evaluated using a mixed-methods approach. For this purpose, a questionnaire will be developed, based on the newly developed framework. In addition to closed questions, open questions will also be asked. This will provide insights into the participants lives and private logic. This information’s helps, to tailor the seminars to actual needs and to provide more in-depth coverage where necessary. In addication, the seminar is accompanied by participant observations. In order to gain more concrete insights into the individual learning processes and subjective perspectives of the students, learning journals with reflection questions are developed for the students to work on. At the end of the seminar, expert interviews will be conducted. As part of the design-based research approach, the methods described above will be evaluated and then used to adapt the competency framework. Since the content of the seminar is based on the competency framework, the seminar and the questionnaire will also be further developed.

Because of the needs of professional teachers as multipliers to support financial education in schools and implement it in educational practice (cf. Compen et al. 2019, p. 15; Urban et al. 2020, p. 22), the project not only contributes to empirical research in the field of financial education, but also to the conceptual development of theory-based and practice-oriented financial education in teacher training. The aim of the research project is to examine whether the experimental group participating in the seminar shows a significantly greater increase in financial literacy and financial self-efficacy over the three survey points than the control group. The chosen mixed-methods approach enables both quantitative before-and-after comparisons and qualitative insights into individual learning processes, subjective interpretation patterns, and the students' lives. The paper presentation will outline the content and structure of the seminar. A key outcome of the research project is the newly developed competency framework for financial education for students, which was derived using multidimensional scaling from the competency descriptions of the OECD/INFE and EntreComp models, among others. The resulting 15 competency fields combine financial education with entrepreneurial thinking and action as well as self-efficacy and serve as a content and didactic orientation for the design of the seminar. This competency framework will be presented and its significance for teacher training will be explained. Based on this, the structure, content, and didactic implementation of the seminar will be explained. Particular attention is paid to the two-phase structure of the seminar. Also, further findings, e.g. the first insights from the seminar evaluation, are going to be presented.

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