Weaving Narratives:
The Dialogue between Leading Activity and a Course Narrative?
A paper presented at ISCAR 2008, San Diego, CA, USA
Farnsworth, V. 1, Davis, P. 1, Farrell, P.1 Kalambouka, A.1, Ralph, S.2, and Shi, X.3
1 University of
2 University of
3 University of
Manchester
Northampton
Sheffield
Contact details: Valerie.farnsworth@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract. This paper reviews findings from a study of the ways students learn about personal
finance from of a course offered to students age 16-19 in the UK by the ifs School of
Finance. We briefly present an analysis of cultural models of personal finance expressed in
the course materials and in interviews with students from the course. We draw on this
analysis to consider the ways these cultural models afford various ways of self-positioning
within the world of finance – what we term personal financial management (PFM) identities.
We argue that we find variations in PFM identities as students weave the “financially
capable-consumer aware” narrative with personal narratives. Thus, some weave the course
narrative with personal narratives to express identities as debt-averse or financially
responsible, while others express identities in terms their consumer savvy. We consider these
patterns and identities, concluding with reflections on the set of beliefs and actions taken as
given within the cultural models of personal finance made available through this course on
finance.
Introduction
Paralleling our aim of abstracting notions of learning framed within an ‘activity’ to the level
of ‘leading activity’ (Davis & Farnsworth, 2008), this paper abstracts notions of ‘dialogue’
performed in social interaction to consider the dialogic qualities of “heteroglossia” and
“multivoicedness” (Wertsch, 1991) at the level of narrative. More specifically, the goal of
this paper is to explore learning in terms of dialogue between cultural models which are
viewed as storylines or narratives about particular phenomena that are socially shared and
individually reproduced and reinterpreted (Gee, 1999). The cultural models of interest to us
here are those which are used by students as they offer their interpretations of a course on
finance.
The data and analysis used in this exploration of learning draws on the financial literacy
education research project based at the University of Manchester. This longitudinal research
study examined the impact of a financial studies course (initiated as part of a similar
movement in the US towards greater ‘financial literacy’ among youth) offered to students
aged 16-19 in the UK. From this research, we identified a positive impact from the course in
terms of students’ repeated expression of identities over time as ‘financially capable’ and
knowledgeable of personal finance (Davis, et. al, 2007).
The primary data used for this analysis draws on the interviews we conducted with a sample
of students who took this course in 2005-6 and with whom we conducted follow-up
interviews. We also reference the course materials, which are posted on a password protected
website for the teachers and students to access and which served as the primary curricular
resource for the teachers (although many teachers were able to supplement lessons with their
own financial services work experience). From this data, we have extracted and interpreted
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narratives which we have divided into two categories: ‘course narrative’ and ‘personal
narrative’. Our aim in this paper is to explore the ways these two types of narratives –
supported by cultural models of personal finance -- can be seen as in-dialogue with each
other. Our approach draws on Bakhtin’s notion of ‘heteroglossia’ which develops the idea
that all words spoken have been previously spoken and hence allows for ‘multivoicedness’
such that words can be understood as associated with multiple “voices” or genres of
discourse.
Multivoicedness frames this paper by viewing learning as a negotiation of multiple voices.
For the purposes of this analysis, we are particularly interested in the “voice” that emerges
from student interviews which can be seen as representing a weaving together particular
cultural models (e.g. of personal finance and leading activity). A key premise of this analysis
is (Bakhtin, 1981: 293-4):
The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when
the speaker populates it with his [sic] own intention, his own accent, when he
appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention.
The above quote describes a process of appropriation that is sometimes referred to as
“ideological becoming” in which a person borrows or ventriloquates the multiple, preexisting voices (heteroglossia) and externalizes this achievement in discourse. In this paper,
we examine the externalization in the context of a research interview. In other words, we
have explored the data asking: In what ways are these students ventriloquating the course
narrative within their personal narratives? We explore this through an analysis of cultural
models and Discourses (Gee, 1999) of personal finance, concepts which provide insight into
the ways the students identified with personal finance – the way they weaved the course
narrative into their lives and identities.
Methods
Our method of analysis draws on Gee’s (1999) approach to discourse analysis. In particular,
we utilise his concepts of ‘cultural model’ and ‘Discourse.’ Cultural models are culturally
formed cognitive schemas that mediate between the micro level of discourse and the macro
level of institutions and cultures (Holland and Quinn, 1987). Borrowing from schema theory
and connectionism, Strauss and Quinn (1997) develop a theory for explaining the links
between language, thought and culture. For Strauss and Quinn (1997), schemas are
collections of elements that work together to make meaning or construct a past, present or
future event. Thus, cultural models refer to cognitive schema that are socially acquired and
used in social interaction. As such, we expect them to be evoked in student interviews to
provide coherence and construct meaning in discourse.
For our analysis, we will use the term “cultural model” to refer to these mental schemas. In
particular, we focus on Gee’s (1999) use of the concept of “cultural models” as a construct to
help explain the ways language can “enact activities, perspectives, and identities” (Gee, 1999,
p. 4). That is, as storylines that help construct what cases or perspectives are considered
central or typical and what cases or perspectives are marginal, non-typical cases (Gee, 1999),
cultural models afford individuals ways of identifying within the ‘figured worlds’ constructed
by these cultural models (Holland et al, 2001). In this case, we are interested in the ways
students identify and position themselves within the figured world of finance. These ways of
identifying with a figured world are expressed through Discourse – what Gee (1999) defines
as ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and interacting that help us enact or recognize a socially
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situated identity. Patterns of language are one way individuals in social interactions can
evoke particular Discourses and enact identities. Cultural models, as cognitive schemas, are
cultural tools that can be also be used to enact a social identity. We thus draw on our analysis
of cultural models in order to explore the ways our interview sample students identified with
personal finance – what we termed their personal financial management (PFM) identities.
Importantly, cultural models may not be expressed explicitly but may be implicit within the
ways people use language. A key goal for our analysis was to extract the various cultural
models evoked within the students’ discourse. From this, we identified themes in terms of the
ways these cultural models supported an identification with personal finance – their personal
financial management (PFM) identities. Given our interests, we focused our attention on the
genre of narrative as a discourse genre that allows for expression of “intonation” that reflects
particular values and perspectives. Identity is considered not as a stable entity but as an
expression of the ways one situates themselves within a social system or figured world such
as personal finance.
The data for this qualitative analysis include interviews with 20 students from the ifs School
of Finance course. The interpretations are informed by an initial analysis of students who
were interviewed in Year 1 and Year 2 of the study. Of the 20 follow-up students interviewed
in Year 3, 15 are among the group from the earlier analysis (ie: 15 have been interviewed in
Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3). For these 15, we have been able to track shifts and consistencies
in their cultural models and PFM identities.
The Year 3 follow up interviews were conducted by telephone with the exception of three
interviews, one who we met up with at her college and two who elected to use an online
instant messenger (MSN) for their interview. All other interviews were conducted during
visits to the colleges. All interviews were semi-structured and asked students about their
personal financial management practices and aspirations, although the first interviews also
asked specific questions about how they were finding the course. Each interview lasted
between 15 and 30 minutes and was transcribed. We then used Atlas.ti to facilitate coding of
the interview data.
Although not addressed in this paper, these follow-up interviews are situated within a larger
study which used survey, interview and ‘light touch’ case study methods to investigate the
impact of the course offered by the ifs School of Finance.
Data Analysis
We begin with an analysis of cultural models of personal finance which we identified within
the course materials and from student interview discourse. We present this analysis first
because we find these cultural models become a key feature of both the course narrative and
of the PFM Discourses evoked by students. We draw on this analysis in our interpretation of
students’ learning as a process of weaving and negotiating the course narrative (or voice)
with their own personal narratives (or voice).
Cultural Models of PFM Evoked in Course Materials
The first year course consists of three Units. Unit 1 is entitled Why Money Matters. The
following excerpts are taken from the documents available online for teachers within Teacher
Notes for each Unit (ifs School of Finance, 2006). These excerpts have been selected because
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they express cultural models about personal finance. The cultural models of PFM evoked in
these Teacher Notes are summarised in Table 1.
Each Unit has an aim. For Unit 1, the aim is described as follows:
In this Unit, students are expected to gain an appreciation of their individual needs,
wants and aspirations as they progress through their personal life cycle and the role
that financial services can play in assisting life-planning. It highlights the
importance of money and introduces them to the financial services industry.
We interpret this as evoking a cultural model of PFM as personal, individual and part of a
‘life cycle’. The concomitant identity within this cultural model is that a person should take
personal responsibility for their finances and consider personal circumstances. The Learning
Outcomes for the Chapters within this Unit and later Units attest to this identity construction
of a financially responsible individual.
Financial capability seems to entail not only making informed financial decisions, but also
keeping up on current issues in finance. This is linked with another cultural model evoked in
Unit 1 that PFM is dependent on larger economic trends:
Students should be able to understand the concept of the personal life cycle and the
impact of social/economic trends.
This first Unit also introduces students to the cultural model that PFM is about doing things
with money. This is evoked in the Key Topics listed under Chapter 3:
Background of where money came from.
What is money? The concept of purchasing power and value.
Types of money eg coin and notes of the realm, cheques, travellers cheques,
vouchers and their benefits/limitations as a means of exchange.
What is not money? eg credit cards vs switch cards.
The purpose of money, which is to transfer value from one person to another.
Where and how money is transferred.
Introduce the concept of bank accounts, what they are for and a basic appreciation of
how they work.
We see the curriculum content attempting to connect with students’ individual lives by
Chapter 4 which has the following aim:
Students should be able to distinguish between needs, wants and aspirations and
how these are met by savings, investments, protection and borrowing.
We interpret this as a cultural model of PFM as about making the right choices given your
aims and circumstances. This has a normative aspect to it in the sense that the ‘right’ choice
takes into account your circumstances and aspirations. The importance of making the right
choices is supported by another cultural model that PFM is integral to living your life. This
constructs a financially capable person as someone who is prepared for eventualities (i.e.:
know financial options/problems in various circumstances). One way we find this cultural
model evoked is in a proposed activity:
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Get the class to list the things that could go wrong and affect someone’s financial
life planning – for themselves or their dependents. They might come up with:
 Loss of a job



 Unmanaged spending on credit cards
The course focus on PFM as individual responsibility and consumer choice is summed up in
one of the Key Topics outlined in the final chapter for Unit 1:
Explain that whilst there is protection for customers, this does not absolve them
from taking personal responsibility for their decisions and being informed about the
choices they make.
Unit 2, Risk and Reward, reinforced these cultural models by offering practical strategies to
managing money and reviewing the ‘fine print’ in some of the products the students might
use now or in the future, such as savings accounts or car insurance. In this unit, the course
curriculum introduces students to more technical terms such as ‘realistic lifetime aspirations
(RLA)’ and ‘high frequency but low severity risk’. Several activities in this unit also refer to
ideas for discussion that include topics such as credit card debt, student loan debt and
poverty.
Unit 2 concludes by expounding on various resources available to students in order to help
them do what the Learning Outcomes for Chapter 6 outline:
In addressing this topic, teachers are encouraged to introduce activities such as reviewing
brochures from banks, websites, and marketing techniques used by financial service
providers.
Unit 3, Making Personal Financial Judgements, aims to bring together the previous themes in
order to develop students’ consumer capabilities. The aims of Unit 3 are described as follows:
This unit is designed to develop a student’s understanding of the interaction
between:
- the external environment;
- the financial products on offer; and
- personal needs and wants
thus enabling them to shop around effectively and decide which products and
services are suitable for an individual given a situation.
Each of these above bullet points are re-visited in greater depth throughout the unit and
students are asked to take on a more evaluative role. For example, Learning Outcomes claim
that students will ‘evaluate and discuss the key external factors driving financial performance
and the resulting effect on the consumer’ where external factors include inflation rates,
interest rates, unemployment rates and stock market performance, among others. Throughout
this unit, and in previous units, references are provided to articles in papers, such as the
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Observer, and journals, such as The Economist. These are offered to teachers as resources for
leading class discussions. Various scenarios or case studies are also presented and students
are expected to ‘analyse and evaluate’ to decide on the most ‘appropriate set of financial
services’ given the situation. The situations represent experiences likely to occur over a
person’s life cycle. This task of evaluating case studies is also the key task of their final
assessment, which is an essay exam. The assessments following Unit 1 and 2 were multiple
choice question exams.
Table 1: Summary of Cultural Models of Personal Financial Management (PFM) from
Course Materials
Code
Description
Individual
PFM is personal, individual
Societal
PFM is dependent on larger economic trends
Money
PFM is about doing things with money
Choices
PFM as about making the right choices given your aims and circumstances
Living Life PFM is integral to living your life at multiple points in a ‘life cycle’
Cultural Models of PFM Evoked in Student Interviews
The cultural models we identify are analytic distinctions based on different ways that students
talked about what they learned from the finance course and ways in which the course has
impacted their lives. In developing categories, our aim is not to suggest that these cultural
models are mutually exclusive. In fact, we note that students (and course materials) often
evoked these cultural models in combination. Nonetheless, we found open thematic coding of
cultural models furthered our analysis of students’ learning. In particular, this analysis
allowed us to identify some of the ways students drew on the course narrative as they
constructed their PFM identities. Before elaborating on the PFM identities, however, we first
summarize the cultural models we identified through an initial analysis and then explore
similarities between the cultural models expressed by students and those evoked in the course
materials.
Across the interview sample, we found students could be drawing on similar dimensions of
PFM but then take different perspectives. Thus, we group the cultural models by dimension
but note the contrasting views. These cultural models are summarised in Table 2.
Table 2: Summary of Cultural Models of Personal Financial Management (PFM) from
Student Interviews
Code
Description
Future/ here and now
PFM is something that I can apply in the future/
PFM is something I can apply now.
In class/everyday
PFM is something I learn about in class/
PFM is something I apply to everyday life (outside of class).
Products/money
PFM is about knowing what products can do for you/
PFM is about managing your money
Choices/agreements
PFM is about making choices among products/
PFM is about making agreements with institutions
Constraints/affordances PFM is about making money work for you (ie: money makes money)/
PFM is something I have to do to avoid debt
Contrasting these cultural models now with our follow-up analysis of the course materials
and cultural models, we make the following correlations:
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Students’ meaning-making of an ‘Individual’ and ‘Living Life’ Cultural Model of PFM
We interpret the future/here and now as students’ interpretation of the course curriculum
cultural model of PFM as individual. That is, in evoking a cultural model of financial
practices as something for ‘the here and now,’ students tended to talk about ways that the
products and practices they learned about related to their lives. This also then draws upon the
aspect of personal finance as a matter of personal decisions and choices, which we also saw
within the ‘individual’ storyline provided in the course materials. Students who expressed a
cultural model of financial practices as something for ‘the future’ also talked about ways that
financial practices applied to adults, such as their parents, or to their future lives, drawing on
the notion of a life cycle and personal finance as part of living life. We see this reference to
the ‘living life’ cultural model also in the in class/everyday cultural model. For example, we
heard students stating that they talked with their family or friends about what they learned
from the finance course. In such statements they evoked a cultural model of financial
management as a practice relevant to day-to-day life. Students also related personal finance to
major life events, such as moving away from home, getting a job or buying a house.
However, not all students seemed to accept this cultural model. A few students seemed to
view personal finance as something to do ‘in class’ or in school, but not outside of school
in ‘everyday’ life. For example, S28 stated that he doesn’t inform his family because ‘when
I get out of school, schoolwork is just pretty much forgotten.’ He clarifies, ‘Don't talk
about school outside of it really.’
Students’ meaning-making of a ‘Money’ and ‘Choice’ Cultural Model of PFM
In interviews, we heard students talk about personal finance in terms of money, relating to a
cultural model of PFM also expressed in the course materials. This way of talking about
personal finance focused on managing money, spending less and saving more. We see this
cultural model as often co-existing with the ‘choice’ cultural model. In fact, the course units
progressed in such a way as to develop a storyline: a regard for the value of money leads to
thoughtful choosing of financial services and products. This storyline was evident in most of
our student interviews, even to the point of expressing a progression from little awareness of
the value of money to being more cautious about how money is spent and the products
chosen. For example, students often talked about being more knowledgeable about loans,
mortgages, current accounts, savings accounts and pensions since taking the ifs School of
Finance courses. Sometimes students talked about what they knew about these products. For
example, a White UK male student Joshua, in his first interview, talked about how he now
knew about the cheque clearing process. In his Year 2 interview, he also talked about new
knowledge he gained, this time emphasising how he learned about the pros and cons of
different products.
We not a slight distinction between talk about personal finance as money
spending/saving habits and personal finance as about knowing different products. Thus, along
one dimension, we found students placed emphasis on what they could do with their money
(ie: save it or spend it) while others were more specific about what products could do for
them. For example, Ahmed talked in his Year 1 interview about how he manages his money
since taking the CeFS course:
I do kinda budget it. Like for the week after I’m gonna spend this much a day or I’m
gonna buy this MP3 player so like you need to know that you’re not gonna be less on
money. So I do budget money to some extent.
It is in the expression of the course cultural model of PFM as ‘choice’ that we find the most
variation among students’ discourse. This perceived variation may be due to the way in
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which this cultural model was often evoked alongside a money/products cultural model. We
also noted differences along a gendered, ethnicized and classed axes (Farnsworth et al., 2008;
Kalambouka et al, 2008) which seemed to relate to the moral dimension of choosing between
products; i.e. what is the ‘right’ choice? Thus, we align the choices/agreements cultural
model with the ‘choice’ cultural model but note the storyline is more detailed and nuanced.
For example, many students expressed the ‘right’ choice in terms of what their teachers
advised, while others refer to their aspirations (e.g. to buy a car or to be rich) and current
circumstances (e.g. living at home). As evoked in the course narrative, talk about making the
‘right’ choice was also often co-expressed with statements in which the student positions him
or herself in distinction from someone in debt. In the process, the student is able to construct
him or herself as a financially capable person -- as someone looking to the future, aware of
the value of money, and able to choose the appropriate product or service when necessary.
Thus, this cultural model took the ‘products/money’ cultural model one step further –
expressing a storyline about how products can help or have helped them achieve their own
financial goals.
This way of viewing financial practices focused on the consumer’s actions. Another
variation on this dimension of thinking about financial products was a cultural model that
established personal financial management as an ‘agreement’ with financial institutions. One
student’s interview (Ahmed) from Year 2 of the study provides an example of this cultural
model. In the following quote, the student is giving his view on credit cards and the danger of
not making payments on your credit card. In the process, he describes credit cards as ‘an
agreement’ and comments:
And if you don’t know anything that’s your problem you’re supposed to find out, and
then what happens is your debt increases, increases and then all they can do is get the
money off you like that. That just ruins their life, which is not their fault because it’s
business isn’t it?
In this extract, the student considers how finances operate on an institutional level and reveals
a more sophisticated understanding of financial institutions than we typically heard from
students. This cultural model of personal financial management differs from a cultural model
that frames financial practices simply in terms of what products are available to them. The
cultural model of financial practice as an agreement suggests a greater awareness of financial
institutions and institutional practices. We surmise that this view emerges in relation to an
aspect of the course materials not previously mentioned – the tendency to vary the
perspective from which the story of personal finance is told. On the one hand, we see a
discourse that details personal finance from the perspective of the individual (e.g. student).
This is evident in directives regarding what students should be able to distinguish between,
evaluate and analyse. On the other hand, we see a discourse that reveals the perspective that a
financial services provider might take. For example, the following key topic for Unit 1
Chapter 6 seems to be guidance for someone entering a career in finance:
Need to highlight that financial services solutions are a means to an end, not an end
in themselves eg a mortgage enables an individual to buy their own home, which is
more important to them than the financial solution.
We also recognise that variations exist in teachers’ approaches to teaching and their own
background and experience with finance. We then expect that this factor, as well as students
personal experiences and family backgrounds (e.g., a parent working in financial services),
situated in particular socio-cultural and historical circumstances (e.g., modern capitalist
society), will also mediate students learning and meaning making of the course curriculum.
We explore this issue with reference to Bakhtin and ‘ideological becoming’ in the next
section.
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Students’ meaning-making of a ‘Societal’ Cultural Model of PFM
The different ways of thinking about financial practices can also have different implications
for how students then positioned themselves in relation to these practices. This dimension
relates to societal structures and hence we interpret this as students’ meaning making of the
societal cultural model from the course materials. We found students evoking this cultural
model as a constraints/affordances cultural model. For example, talk about financial
practices as ‘should do’ activities was part of the ‘choices’ cultural model, but sometimes
students also linked the available and appropriate choices to their current economic contexts.
A common topic in this regard was debt – students seemed intent on avoiding debt, many
deciding not to get a credit card until they knew they could pay it off (i.e. had a job, revised
their habits etc). This view portrayed personal financial management as a matter of
recognising and living within certain constraints. For example, in the following quote from a
Year 1 interview, Tim, evoked a cultural model that emphasises personal financial
management as a matter of constraints when he remarked, ‘I try to avoid borrowing, get
loans and things but if it has to be done just need [to be] sensible about it, make sure you can
pay it back.’ He also talked about financial products and ways that he was monitoring his
behaviour: ‘I already had a savings account but I just put more in like if I get it, it just goes
straight into the account.’ By contrast, students who talked about ways that they wanted to
make their money work for them were revealing a cultural model of financial practices as
affordances. Arjun talked mostly in his Year 1 and Year 2 interviews about investments,
saying about the course:
Its made me look at more than, you know because originally like money in the banks and
all that I've looked at shares, stock, properties and its made me think that you know
there's more than [one] way to see it and when you make money grow.
Later in the interview, Arjun epitomised this cultural model of personal finance as a matter of
affordances when he commented that, ‘Money makes money.’ We surmise that this may be
related to class background and available financial resources1. Ultimately, we find students
evoking cultural models found within the course materials, but also note personal variations,
which we attribute to the weaving of course and personal narratives.
Weaving Course Narrative and Personal Narrative
We now draw on Bakhtin (1981) in considering the ways students negotiate multiple voices,
inherent in heteroglossic discourse, and the ways they were "selectively assimilating the
words of others" (p. 276). This selective process, we argue, draws on broader aspirations and
identities, which we have previously analysed in terms of ‘leading identity’ (Davis et al,
2008). To establish a dialogue, we must first identify the two or more ‘parties’ in dialogue
with each other. In this instance, we propose that the ‘parties’ are ‘voices’ or genres. On the
one hand, we consider the voice of the course and on the other, the voice of the student.
Evidence of these distinct voices comes from our analysis of the course materials and
students’ discourse from which we noted particular themes within the discourse and narrative
themes or storylines about personal finance (also referred to as cultural models).
For example, when asked about the course and their approaches to personal finance, we often
heard students speak of ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. These same words were used in the course
materials when presenting ‘key topics’ for teachers to address. We argue then that these
words are elements of a specific genre introduced to students through the ifs School of
Finance course. Along with other domain-specific terms such as ‘realistic lifetime aspirations
1
A full analysis of these class differences was not possible since this data has not been collected specifically in
our study. We are able to estimate class based on EMA credit, money provided towards school expenses for
low-income families, and students’ passing references to their family’s financial status.
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(RLA)’ and ‘high frequency but low severity risk’ we identify an ‘authoritative’ (Bakhtin,
1981) voice on the topic of personal finance. In this paper, we highlight a few examples from
student interviews to show how we see students making this authoritative voice ‘internally
persuasive’ through their personal narratives and their own voice.
The previous analysis of cultural models supports our interpretation of learning as a process
of weaving or negotiating different voices. That is, these cultural models from Table 1 are
part and parcel to the genre we have identified. The cultural models also afford particular
ways of identifying with personal finance – a way of situating oneself within the “figured
world” of finance. In particular, we found that most students expressed a PFM identity as
someone who was ‘consumer aware.’ Cultural models of PFM in terms of ‘money’ and
‘choice’ were used in enacting this identity in the interviews:
Mahmood (Year 2): Yes, [the CeFS course] made me think about products like I
would really consider, before I used to just jump into like say buying something, I’d
say now I’d shop around for something.
Mahmood continued saying he would now look for “who offers the best deal and the
different points like I wouldn’t consider before because if I wasn’t doing financial studies I
wouldn’t really know that, which points I want to consider, what to look at when I’m
comparing so it helps.”
However, we also found that students’ personal narratives and ways of talking about personal
finance were accented by “leading activity”. This juxtaposition of the course narrative with
their personal narratives is what we are calling a weaving of narratives, or evidence of the
way multivoicedness is implicated in learning.
We identify the ‘voice’ of the course in terms of its genre – a combination of form and
content. Thus, the semantic choice of words as well as the cultural models evoked
characterise the course narrative. Based on our analysis of the course materials presented
above and more in-depth analysis of student interviews, we summarize the course narrative -a ‘financially capable-consumer aware’ narrative -- as follows: it is easy to get into financial
troubles and such troubles can have a major impact on quality of life, hence being financially
capable is important. To become financially capable it is important to be consumer aware and
to be able to take informed decisions about personal financial matters. Financial needs vary
with different stages of the life cycle, and in order to maximise quality of life at each stage it
is important to be savvy and to budget and plan ahead for each stage. Personal financial
management is for the ‘here and now’ but it is also for the future, to support needs, wants and
aspirations, be that going to university, buying a house or having a comfortable financially
worry free retirement. Financial management will run through life and can help you achieve
what you want to achieve.
We heard this narrative reflected also in student interviews, as we have illustrated (partially
due to space) in the previous section. However, we also noted that consumer awareness, or
what students often talked about as new ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ they learned from the
course, was applied in different ways by students. That is, we heard some students talk about
applying this knowledge in their approach to avoiding debt (debt-averse), while others
applied it in their goal of making money (entrepreneur). Although the two approaches are not
mutually exclusive, we found students tended toward one Discourse (Gee, 1999) or the other.
We identify these as Discourses because of the ways they can be interpreted as evoking
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particular identities – as someone who is an entrepreneur or as someone who is debt-averse
(or some might say, as financially responsible). We shift then in our analysis of student
interview data from talking about genres to talking about Discourses in order to allow for an
analysis of PFM identities. These identities are our re-presentations of students’ personal
narratives and discourse. We have identified three main Discourses used to enact PFM
identities:
‘consumer aware or consumer savvy’
Personal financial management is considered as being part of everyday life, now and in the mid
and more distant future, is about being able to make informed decisions about financial
products, planning ahead and managing money.
‘entrepreneur’
Implies being consumer aware and in addition a strong belief in making money work: money
makes money and wanting to play an active role in making this happen
‘debt averse’
May or may not be consumer aware, finance is seen as a matter of constraints, regarding things
to not do rather than things that could be done to advance one’s financial position.
We have argued elsewhere for the ways in which ‘leading identity’ mediated student learning
and PFM identities, particularly among those students who talked about aspirations to enter
business or finance careers (Davis et. al, 2008). We saw the ways these students were
sometimes able to weave personal narratives regarding these aspirations with the course
narrative to enact an entrepreneur PFM identity. In this paper, we highlight the students who
did not evoke an entrepreneur identity but tended more to express their identification with an
anti-debt or consumer aware Discourse2.
Debt-averse
Although we found that all students referred to consumer knowledge and hence evoked a
consumer aware PFM identity, a debt-averse Discourse seemed to be more dominant. That is,
the debt-averse Discourse was more often weaved in with personal narratives. For example,
Salima often talked about personal finance as knowledge and information, but situated this
cultural model within the context of the course rather than in relation to personal experience:
You know, the information was all there and the way the teacher teaches it I got
more aware of building societies and investing and things like that… (Year 1)
A strong theme in Salima’s interviews was being cautious. She often evoked what we have
identified as a ‘money’ cultural model from the course narrative. In evoking this cultural
model, she relates to her personal experience and ways of managing money. In her Year 2
interview, she stated:
I think ‘what I was actually in need [of]’ and not would want to be honest. I think
how I‘d spent my money on things that were absolutely necessary and those that
weren’t. Learned not to borrow. Take more care of money now.
2
To give a sense of scope, we grouped students from Cohort 3 based on the PFM identities they expressed in an
interview conducted near the end of the course and found consumer aware or savvy (55%), entrepreneur
(11%) and debt averse (21%). The remaining 12% of interviews exhibited approaches that were too unstable
to be classified as a distinct way of thinking and behaving with regard to personal financial management and
were classified as ‘becoming’.
11
Despite her consumer awareness, Salima does not save money in a bank but with her mother.
This is perhaps also testimony to our claim that the consumer aware Discourse is not
internally persuasive for her:
Yes I actually save a lot of money now, I do a lot of saving. I don’t have an account
I have actually saved money with my mother. I give it to her and she saves it for me
now. I think it’s a bit safer than an account because then I could go and take the
money out, but with my mum she just won’t give it me back.
We also note that although most students, when asked to tell us about a recent financial
decision, referred to their consumer savvy, Salima referred to a theme also in the course
narrative – to consider her needs versus her wants. In Year 3, when Salima was asked about a
recent financial decision she gave a personal narrative in which she weaves in a Discourse of
someone who is debt-averse:
I thought to myself, I’d rather go abroad, rather than spend it on a plasma. I can
watch on normal TV. We don’t all need plasmas. I thought it was best if I go on to
this holiday and I can attend the wedding as well. I was going to loan off someone
as well, and I thought it best not to get into borrowing money and stuff.
Salima continues later by referring directly to the course:
And then I thought, well, do I take it, do I not take it? And we were talking about
this in class as well and I don’t know what happened during this classroom but I
thought to myself, I won’t take the loan because I’ll be paying off too many years on
my interest, rather than paying the actual sum that I’ve got, it’ll be taking me
forever to kind of cover it. I didn’t realise these things until I was taught them,
through this course.
Interestingly, Salima is taking Business courses at college but is not sure about university. In
her second year interview, she states her intent “to work in admin – in office secretarial jobs
or something.” By year 3, Salima has graduated college and is working full-time – recently
promoted from cashier to marketing. We do not have examples from her interviews of the
course narrative being weaved together with narratives about her leading activity or career
aspirations. Rather, we find a focus on her identity as a responsible person, someone who will
be cautious with money to avoid debt.
Consumer-aware
The consumer-aware Discourse seemed to be the most accessible to students, regardless of
their ‘leading activities’. For example, Ayesha seemed to be still considering various careers,
not having a clear ‘leading identity’ guided by a career aspiration in the way we saw with
other students. In Year 1, she states:
Yes, I want to do accountancy but I did want to do business management but being a
manager of a store is very stressful, you’ve got to listen to everyone…
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Later on in the interview she also comments:
Yes I wouldn’t mind being an estate agent or anything or to work in a bank, opening
accounts and stuff, wouldn’t mind doing that because that’s a right job as well.
Rather than a career being the key motivator, we find that the course has meaning for her in
terms of the way it has informed her ability to make appropriate financial choices and know
about differences between available products. She also talked about personal finance as
something for the future, noting that her father currently supports her. She comments:
…but when I’m older like oh, my God I haven’t got a job what am I going to do, I
want to pay this, I want to pay that so like if I’d spent all my money or like make a
savings account and stuff like that you know tied me over for rainy days and stuff..
She expresses herself as consumer aware even in this first interview, even though she does
not yet have her own income:
Just learning about banks products, insurance companies and stuff like that and how
you can just walk in and get whatever you want these days really. Before you just
like .. specific bank accounts and bank companies that do it, now it’s just you can
get it off the internet and everything it’s like .. you can spread things over above five
years without no protection plans stuff like that so just know that without doing it …
In her Year 2 interview, Ayesha refers to her potential career aspiration to work in a bank but
in the context of a narrative which draws on a consumer-aware Discourse:
Yes, but I don’t mind working in a bank as well. But because this CEFs is to do with
financial and when you go into a bank now and look at their products, you know
what they are talking about and you know what ARPs mean properly, all their terms
and conditions. Normally you are confused so you think about the product, but now
it’s just … if you go with your mum or your dad, you can tell them so you don’t have
to wait in a big queue at customer service to explain it to them.
In this imagined experience of going to a bank, Ayesha draws on the course genre with
regards to key terms in finance such as APR while also relating to a personal situation with
her parents. In this interview, she also describes her ‘financial plan’ (when asked) as to be
‘cautious’ and states that she has decided to not get a credit card. This draws on an anti-debt
Discourse but we do not find examples in her interviews that weave the course narrative with
personal narratives. Rather, we find she is keen to present herself as consumer aware. In
another example, she again refers to an imagined future experience in drawing on a consumer
aware Discourse:
Whereas before like if you went into a bank or somebody came to your door offering
you things, you would be drawn into them, because you don’t know what it is so you
listen to everything. But know when they say something and you are confused about
it, you tackle them, so you question them back.
In year 3, Ayesha also evokes elements of the course narrative and the anti-debt Discourse,
but her use of the pronoun ‘you’ suggests a distancing from this notion, suggesting that this
Discourse is not as ‘internally persuasive’ as the consumer aware Discourse:
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[CeFS] taught me how to save money and stuff and it tells you how to plan ahead and if
something unplanned for happened, then what would you do? You’d have to borrow money
from somewhere so if you have that money then you wouldn’t need to panic and think,
where would I get that money from?
By contrast, she describes her evaluation of financial products using I-statements:
In the course, it said that incentives was a good thing so that’s why I started looking at the
money side of it first and because the cheaper one wasn’t all that good and didn’t have the
right incentives, I thought, and then I actually did add up all the incentives
In another narrative in this third interview, Ayesha showed evoked a cultural model of
‘constraints’ – a variation on the ‘societal’ and ‘choice’ cultural models of PFM – which
helps to present her PFM identity as a consumer, moreover, as someone who is consumer
aware. She weaved the course narrative with a personal narrative about her relatives
experience with financial investments:
My aunty bought stocks and shares because someone told her they’d double within a year
but they actually went down. What she invested went down nearly a half and she thought,
when I get back my capital I’ll withdraw out of it … I would just [use] savings accounts or
bonds or something but it depends on what kind of bonds they are.
In this brief narrative, Ayesha refers to financial products and shows her refined knowledge
of products when she comments ‘it depends on what kind of bonds they are.’ At the same
moment, she is referencing her Aunt’s experience with stocks and shares. Her aunt’s
experience is used as an example of what not to do – expressing a cultural model of personal
finance as a matter of making appropriate and informed choices.
Discussion
We find that some students seemed to connect with the consumer aware genre of the course
narrative, but not with an anti-debt or entrepreneur Discourse. We coded these students as
expressing a consumer aware or consumer savvy identity because the knowledge gained from
the course narrative was useful in presenting themselves as someone who gets the best deals,
makes wise consumer decisions and was not naïve about what is on offer. This was also the
Discourse that we heard them weaving most often with personal narratives. We suggest that
this Discourse is the most pervasive not only because it is a key strand in the course narrative,
but also because a consumer Discourse is arguably a dominant Discourse within modern
capitalist society.
We also find a significant number of students weaving the anti-debt Discourse within their
personal narratives and meaning-making of the course narrative. This we suggest draws its
relevance for students not from a ‘leading activity’ based on a career aspiration, but on an
aspiration to be a responsible citizen. In a day and age when citizenship is a valued cultural
commodity, this Discourse gains significant power.
The PFM identities expressed by students within their personal narratives are multiply shaped
by past experiences and future aspirations (leading identities) as well as the course narrative.
However, we argue here that we also need to take into account dominant social and cultural
Discourses.
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Conclusion
This analysis examined ‘dialogue’ at the narrative level – as dialogue between the students’
personal narratives and the “course narrative.” As Wertsch (1991) notes, Bakhtin’s notion of
heteroglossia and mulitvoicedness pushed approaches to sociocultural theories of learning to
be truly sociocultural by accounting for social, cultural and historical influences. We
acknowledge this in our analysis of the impact of the finance course on students. Our analytic
approach involved an analysis of the interview discourse and course materials, particularly
through identification of cultural models (Gee, 1999) of personal finance. We found the
course cultural models reflected in student talk. However, we also found variations in these
cultural models, and combinations, in ways that suggest the course material is not something
that is directly absorbed by students, but appropriated through a weaving of narratives. This
appropriation, we argue, is mediated by leading activity (Davis et al, 2008) but also by
broader Discourses regarding being a consumer and a responsible citizen. Our current
question is whether these Discourses might be part of ‘leading activity’ or whether we need
to consider these Discourses as representing distinct strands of a student’s identity which can
become a key mediating factor in learning.
One implication of this analysis relates to the potential lessons we learned about learning.
This shows us how learning for an individual can be seen as a dialogue between a personal
narrative and course narrative. Another related implication focuses more on what students
learned through this process of weaving narratives. To explore this issue, we consider
Michael Young’s proposal to distinguish between knowledge of the powerful and powerful
knowledge. This distinction, he argues, is critical for any examination of curriculum as it
focuses our attention on the types and sources of knowledge being taught and valued in
schools. He proposes that curriculum analysis should consider two types of knowledge:
context-dependent knowledge which is used in everyday lives for practical purposes and
context-independent knowledge that is “not tied to particular cases and therefore provides a
basis for generalizations and making claims about universality.” (p. 15). It is this contextindependent knowledge that he proposes should be the focus of school curriculum and can
provide young people a basis for acquiring powerful knowledge. Our proposal is that the ifs
School of Finance course largely supported students in learning knowledge of the powerful, in
particular, practical knowledge about how to manage personal finances and evaluate financial
product choices. This knowledge may empower students in the sense that these young people
express more confidence about entering banks and/or taking on new financial responsibilities.
However, this would classify as context-dependent knowledge and thus we would not expect
it to foster generalizations that could apply to other areas of life and ethical issues.
We would like to conclude the paper with a quote from a student who began (or attempted) to
express powerful knowledge in the context of reflecting on the ifs School of Finance course.
This way of talking about finance, however, is notably absent from the other interviews.
Thus, our question is, how might powerful knowledge be taught within a course on finance?
How might a course narrative, which evokes context-independent knowledge, be weaved
together with young people’s personal narratives? Or is this, like the entrepreneur identity,
dependent on ‘leading identity’?
The quote comes from a response to a question we asked students in the year 3 interviews:
Can you tell me, what meaning does money have for you? Carl struggled with this, as many
students do, prefacing his response with, “I find it hard to put it into words. It’s like a way
that, it’s like, I’m stuck on that. It’s like, is this like a mad, what I think or is it…” He trails
15
off and decides he will think about it. We come back to the topic later in the interview and he
attempts to “find the words” (truncated here for space):
So if, say, I don’t know, like, say the poorest people in the country and the richest,
they both go down because if inflation goes down, they both go down. You’re not…I
really can’t get words out…
Yeah. It’s the way countries like, like America’s got like loads because they’re one
of the richest countries and they just…it’s, it might be because they’ve got a lot of
people there, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought into it…
…There’s that and then there’s loads of different things coming out of it like
personal money and like personal is to just live rather than buy things and then
there’s like, businesses and stuff who use money to like, run the businesses and buy
stock and…
There’s loads of stuff. It all goes up to like, the whole country, when it’s all
got…people buy stuff from businesses, the businesses buy stuff from like, bigger
businesses and then that goes like, into the country eventually. Do you know what I
mean?
This broader view of money connected with finance and economies, also expressed in
another way by Ahmed in terms of a cultural model of PFM as an agreement with financial
institutions, could be one way to think about powerful knowledge in personal finance. That
is, could cultural models with these broader views – beyond making appropriate decisions
and choices between products -- allow individuals more scope in the figured world of finance
within which to situate themselves – and potentially open up different PFM identities?
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