Educação Financeira: concepções de estudantes de um pré-vestibular social em Duque de Caxias

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the conceptions of students from peripheries, who study in a social pre-university entrance exam, in relation to Financial Education. In the research, we set out to answer the following question: What knowledge and meanings are produced by a group of students from Duque de Caxias when discussing Financial Education? To this end, a study was carried out involving 15 students from a pre-university entrance exam in Duque de Caxias, which is a peripheral city in the state of Rio de Janeiro. We built our theoretical foundation based on the themes of critical Financial Education, consumption in modern liquid society and decolonial pedagogy. The method consisted of a study divided into three stages, using the action research technique. The first referred to the application of a questionnaire with the intention of raising the students' socioeconomic profile and their initial conceptions about Financial Education. The second turned to the intervention phase, which was divided into five meetings, dealing with the topics of consumption, organization of the domestic budget, the power of compound interest, ethics in Financial Education and entrepreneurship. And, finally, the third corresponds to the application of a final questionnaire, with some questions similar to the initial questionnaire. The results of the initial questionnaire show that the conceptions of the investigated students are of a Financial Education that is reduced to investments, the organization of the financial budget and the contents related to Financial Mathematics. After the teaching intervention, we could observe through the final questionnaire that there was an expansion of the concepts related to Financial Education, undoing some mistaken ideas and starting to have a more critical position. The importance of this research lies in listening to the voices of subjects from the periphery, their perceptions, their decision making and how they operate in today's consumer society, pointing out ways that can create conditions for the construction of a critical Financial Education in the classroom, that meet the needs experienced by these subjects.