Inclusive financial literacy education for inspiring a critical financial consciousness: an experiment in partnership with marginalised youth

In the absence of critical inquiry, traditional financial literacy education risks socialising economically marginalised groups into an acceptance of the very power structures that created their marginalisation in the first place. The instructor-facilitator seeking to confront the challenge of promoting critical thinking about a subject widely accepted to be factual and esoteric faces considerable obstacles. Adoption of inclusive pedagogies in the design and delivery of financial literacy workshops offers a means of challenging positivist notions of authentic knowledge' in finance. This paper brings the socially constructed nature of finance to the forefront and offers reflections on our experience with a series of student-led workshops intended to advance financial literacy and a critical financial consciousness in economically marginalised youth, some of whom have been marginalised by the formal education system as well.