1 Introduction

The National Committee for Financial Education (CONEF), the first in Brazil to establish guidelines for the Program Financial Education in Schools, during the term of the program and its actions, within the scope of the Estratégia Nacional de Educação Financeira — ENEF (National Strategy for Financial Education), based on art. 4, of Decree no. 7.397, of December 22, 2010 (^{Brasil 2010}), considering the strategic redirection of the Program, as deliberated at the 25th meeting of CONEF, on September 29, 2016:

Art. 2: The guidelines for the implementation of the Financial Education in Schools Program are: I — universalization of the theme of financial education in schools, through its progressive inclusion in school curricula and integration into Brazilian school culture; II — focus on actions with a teacher as the protagonist of the process of disseminating the theme in schools, with training actions; III — participation of higher education institutions; IV — encouragement of decentralized production of educational content; and V — coordination with public education systems.

Art. 3: Establish as an objective for the implementation of the Program the integration, by 2024, of the theme “financial education” into Brazilian school culture, so that teachers, students and administrators develop and experience projects and activities on the theme in everyday school life.

(^{Brasil, 2018})

The Base Nacional Comum Curricular [BNCC — National Common Curricular Base] (^{Brazil, 2017}) proposes an organic and progressive set of essential knowledge, skills and abilities that all students should develop throughout the stages and modalities, from Early Childhood Education to High School and, among the novelties, it included Financial Education as one of the cross-cutting themes to be worked on in the different subjects:

It is up to education systems and networks, as well as schools, in their respective spheres of autonomy and competence, to incorporate into their curricula and teaching proposals the approach to contemporary issues that affect human life on a local, regional and global scale, preferably in a cross-cutting and integrative way. In the BNCC, these themes are included in the skills of the curricular components, and it is up to the education systems and schools, according to their specificities, to deal with them in a contextualized way.

(^{Brasil, 2018}, p. 19)

As soon as the law made it compulsory to develop Financial Education in schools, the teachers responsible for teaching basic education sought further training on the subject and, as a result, many academic course conclusion papers appeared at events on EF. Thus, the guiding question behind this study was: What do the studies that investigated Financial Education in the latest editions of ENEM, CIBEM and SIPEM say?. Given this guiding question, we aimed to identify and analyze the academic research that investigated the theme of Financial Education in the latest editions of ENEM, CIBEM and SIPEM.

2 Financial Education in official documents

School Financial Education, according to ^{Silva and Powell (2013)}, is a

set of information through which students are introduced to the world of money and stimulated to produce an understanding of finance and economics, through a teaching process that enables them to analyze, make reasoned judgments, make decisions and take critical positions on financial issues that involve their personal lives, families and the society in which they live. (p. 13)

For National Strategy for Financial Education (^{Brasil, 2010}), assuming the definitions of the OECD (2005), Financial Education consists of the process through which citizens, and consequently society, in general, can improve their understanding of concepts related to financial products and thus develop the values and skills necessary to make more assertive decisions in the face of opportunities and risks involved, improving your well-being. With a higher level of awareness and criticality, such citizens become capable of contributing significantly to social transformation, projecting a better future for everyone.

The Financial Education, whether at school or not, is geared towards training individuals who are capable of making decisions. Thus, we can say that it provides the conditions to perceive information, understand it, evaluate it and make the best decisions that will lead to long-term well-being.

In view of this, Table 1 shows the objective and benefits of the Financial Education in Schools program, according to the National Committee for Financial Education.

Thus, the creation of well-directed formal strategies, with clear specific objectives, represented a leap forward for EF in schools. However, how are EF contents being proposed for the organization of the Basic Education school curriculum according to the BNCC?

The BNCC is a normative document for education networks and their public and private institutions, a mandatory reference for drawing up school curricula and teaching proposals for Early Childhood Education, Primary Education and Secondary Education in Brazil. The BNCC aims to organize what every student in Basic Education should know.

The BNCC (^{Brasil, 2017}) includes Financial Education as one of the Transversal Contemporary Themes — TCT. The TCTs aim to develop practical, cognitive and socio-emotional skills that promote attitudes and values that enable the resolution of the demands of everyday life, the exercise of citizenship and professional life.

According to the BNCC, contemporary themes are divided into six groups, namely:

3 Methodological design

The methodological approach is a qualitative bibliographical approach with an interpretative objective. As presented by Creswell (2007, p. 186), “qualitative research is fundamentally interpretive, in which the researcher interprets the data”. Therefore, we believe that the use of electronic databases, promoted by SBEM, would enable a more efficient bibliographic survey of academic production.

As such, the three events promoted by the Brazilian Society of Mathematics Education (SBEM) are recognized as eligible channels for consultation: National Meeting of Mathematics Education (ENEM, 14th edition, held in 2022), International Seminar on Research in Mathematics Education (SIPEM, 8th edition, held in 2021) and Ibero-American Congress of Mathematics Education (CIBEM, 9th edition, held in 2022). We justified the choice of events because they allow access to journals recognized for the credibility of their publications and are available on the Portal for download¹. The following were used as descriptors to map the production: Financial, Financial Mathematics and Financial Education, and we used the latest editions of the event as a time frame.

We screened the number of papers presented in the database and then began reading the title, abstract and keywords to identify the papers that would make up the corpus (resulting from the filtering), meeting at least one of the following inclusion criteria: correlating the topic to the area of EF; addressing empirical studies; or presenting some discussion that correlates to teaching and learning processes. Once we had confirmed the existence of some correlation between the research and the subject under investigation, we created a spreadsheet as a way of systematizing and organizing the results found in the publications consulted and proceeded to read the full text.

As data analysis procedures, we used Content Analysis (CA), from the perspective of ^{Bardin (1977)}, who defines it as

a set of techniques for analyzing communications in order to obtain, by means of objective and systematic procedures for describing the content of messages, indicators (quantitative or not) that allow the inference of knowledge concerning the conditions of production/reception of these messages. (p. 42)

In the light of the Content Analysis movement, we carried out an interpretative analysis of the corpus based on a dialogical movement. Thus, we move on to the following sections where we present the analysis of the works that came closest to the object of this study.

In this way, the following categories were listed a posteriori: a) Financial Education is consolidated as a topic to be discussed in subjects; b) Financial Education is a trend with a fundamental role in Mathematics Education (Critical); c) Financial Education as a pedagogical tool in the training of mathematics teachers; and d) Financial Education as a basis for contextualization on current issues related to different contexts.

4 Results

After filtering, 31 papers were found that were close to the theme of ‘Financial Education’, and the terminologies T1, T2, T3, T4 and T31 were used to refer to the papers, as shown in the table below.

The first thematic category of production Financial Education is consolidated as a topic to be discussed in subjects, presenting 16 works among the 31 that bring theories of financial education as a curricular component. Reinforced by its applicability at different levels of education, as described in the Common Curricular Base — BNCC, which is a document of a normative nature that determines a minimum that must be addressed in schools, in terms of objects of knowledge, skills and competencies, of early childhood education to the completion of secondary education. Financial Education, according to the BNCC (^{Brazil, 2017}), should be addressed as a transversal contemporary theme, both in regular classes and through projects. The National Education Council (CNE) determined that education networks must adapt basic education curricula, including financial education, by 2020.

Based on this premise, we reaffirm that Financial Education as a discipline should “provide participants with activities that provide moments of reflection on their development as citizens, stimulating entrepreneurial skills, and thus developing financial sustainability and improving quality of life” (^{Sella, 2013}, p. 4). Corroborating this, ^{Kliemann, Silva and Dullius (2011, p. 97)} point out that “this information should be explored through play, simulations of buying and selling, writing a check, comic strips, theatrical performances, in short, anything that can contribute to the process of building learning for the student”.

Santo, Giordano and Assis (A10) sought answers to the following research question: What are the possible advances in the curricular proposals for Financial Education in the states of Pará and São Paulo?. In the light of the BNCC document, the results indicated that, even belatedly, EF in Basic Education, in a transversal way, as a subject, allows multiple approaches by different teachers, from different curricular components, placing it in the condition of a potential curricular articulator.

Santos, Hermann and Lorin (A12) carried out a survey of recent discussions about PE that may have influenced the creation of a Financial Education subject in the Paraná state primary school system. The results pointed to the need and relevance of discussions about Financial Education in the school environment, recognizing its contribution to the integral and critical formation of the subject.

In this way, it is possible to see that the 16 papers in this first category aimed at adverse discussions, with the greatest frequency emphasizing that EF should be part of the Basic Education curriculum, thus consolidating itself as a curricular subject or as the subject of a discipline, and therefore a field of teaching and research in Mathematics Education.

Another thematic category identified in the papers emphasizes that Financial Education is a trend with a fundamental role in (Critical) Mathematics Education, associated with primary documents A5, A9, A15, A19, A30 and A31. These are works that go beyond merely understanding the theorization of FE, but bring elements of mathematical content into the classroom, in a way that “expands these moments to critical reflections on economic and social aspects of students’ reality, seeking a democratic movement” (Hartmann and Maltempi [A30]).

Approaching the concept of Critical Mathematics Education, that is, for teaching, research and extension to have critical characteristics “it must discuss basic conditions for obtaining knowledge, it must be aware of social problems, inequalities, suppression, etc., and it must try to make education a progressively active social force” (^{Skovsmose, 2001}, p. 101).

The category Financial Education as a pedagogical tool in math teacher training has five papers associated with primary documents A13, A17, A20, A24 and A27. The discussions presented by the authors on mathematics teacher training in the papers analyzed also reveal that teachers’ participation in training environments in/for PE, as a pedagogical tool in initial and continuing training, should be encouraged, allowing them to “understand transformative possibilities of experience, making them problematic and critical” (^{Skovsmose, 2008}, p. 226).

In these works, we understand that it is important for teachers to go through training moments that include situations involving Financial Education during their initial training, so that it reaches the school space. Thus, in line with ^{Civiero (2016, p. 33)}, we consider “the Critical Mathematics Education movement as a possibility for epistemological transformation in teacher training”. We would also point out that, through extension courses, mini-courses, workshops, specialization, as well as engagement in collaborative groups, according to ^{Fiorentini (2006)}, they make it possible to socialize classroom experiences, so that the nuances of teaching and learning processes can be discussed and methodological strategies reflected upon.

With regard to the category Financial Education as a basis for contextualizing current issues related to different contexts, it is associated with primary documents A4, A21, A22, A25 and A28. The comprehensions explained in the discussions presented by the authors, on the pragmatism conceived by the EMC, work with themes that permeate different contexts. That is, through reflection-action-reflection on socio-economic, political, environmental and cultural issues, always envisaging new possibilities, because “education must be part of a process of democratization [...], the educational process must be understood as a dialogue” (^{Skovsmose, 2001}, p. 18). Since “one of the aims of education must be to prepare for critical citizenship” (^{Skovsmose, 1992}, p. 16).

5 Final considerations

Academic production in EF has grown significantly in recent years, but it is still very little if we take into account that Brazil is the third worst country in terms of young people’s financial skills, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which evaluated 20 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and was only ahead of Peru, Georgia and Indonesia.

Among the most significant results, we found the need to broaden and deepen discussions about EF in the school environment, recognizing its contribution to the integral and critical formation of the subject, the articulation of EF with social, political, economic, environmental and cultural problems, making education a progressively active social force, as well as the urgency of implementing continuing education programs in Financial Education.

We believe that this literature review will be useful to other researchers in identifying existing gaps in national academic production in the field of Financial Education, as well as pointing out possible trends in this area, which is increasingly requested in Brazilian post-BNCC curricula.