engleski

Acquiring Stock Market Literacy

Mathematics should be taught within a context to allow learners to understand the significance of its content (Van den Heuvel- Panhuizen & Drijvers, 2014). As well, many of the most recent suggestions for mathematics content emphasize contextualized learning in real life, meaningful situations (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000 ; National Governors Association, 2010). In order to address this call for learning mathematics with meaning, an interactive game was used to teach the United States stock market. Considering how events shape the stock market including profits and losses is possible through a free, interactive stock market game. The game can be integrated into both secondary and university level courses. Students are provided with an opportunity to buy/sell/short stock in a competition that can take place over several weeks or a complete school year. An important element of the simulation is that students learn in an inquiry-based manner and in real time. There is potential for both success and failure, and chances for students to redeem themselves if missteps are made. No prior stock market knowledge is necessary and the interactive game is quite easy to implement. Two specific open source virtual games that are centered on stock exchanges can be used to situate learning. MarketWatch (http://www.marketwatch.com/) is an easy to use, popular website that allows users to create games based solely on the American market including the NYSE and NASDAQ. To accommodate an international audience, The Global Virtual-Stock-Exchange (http://www.virtual-stock-exchange.com/) is another website that allows users to create and join games based on over 30 markets throughout the world. Using MarketWatch (http://www.marketwatch.com/), interactive games can be created with specific rules that contain (or exclude) features including: (1) starting balance, (2) price limits, (3) commissions, (4) volume limits, (5) shorting and (6) margin selling. A game was conducted with preservice elementary STEM teachers in a mathematics methods course in the southwest United States. At the start of the interactive game, students were provided with $25, 000 and had to complete at least 15 trades by the end of the game. The game took place over a semester. Half the trades (8) had to be completed by the middle of the game. In this paper, we posed the following research questions: What changes in a student knowledge regarding the economy occurred due to participation in the virtual game focusing on the stock market? What is the pattern of thinking that occurred due to a student’s exposure to the virtual game focusing on stock exchanges? Exploratory case study methodology was used because the study focused on a contemporary phenomenon within a real context and attempted to answer general questions meant to facilitate further examination of the phenomenon observed (Yin, 2013). The data sources were the student’s written responses to prompts throughout the semester. As a case study, one student, Alex, will be presented to show his trajectory in thinking. He started out with a very brief description as to why he bought the stock he did. At the completion of the activity, he discussed the economy and how this interactive game relates to learning across various discipline levels.

stock market literacy, interactive games, mathematical thinking, STEM teachers

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