Voices from the Field: Perspectives from High School Financial Educators

Authors

• Karen L. Franck, University of TennesseeFollow
• Christopher Sneed, University of TennesseeFollow
• Ann A. Berry, University of TennesseeFollow

Volume

64

Issue

2

Abstract

High school personal finance courses provide youth with skills to successfully manage money and finances. Extension programs have been vital partners to help develop and implement personal finance courses through resource development and trainings. To strengthen these classes, we conducted a comprehensive needs assessment with high school teachers. The needs assessment included surveys, focus groups, and interviews with high school teachers with current or previous experience teaching personal finance classes. Teachers identified major challenges related to engaging students in the program, especially students living in poverty. Recommendations include changes to the overall program and tips for replicating this needs assessment.

Authors’ Contribution Statement

For this paper, Karen Franck was involved with the study conceptualization, assisted with recruitment of teachers for data collection, created the online surveys, and completed all data analyses. She wrote the methods and results sections. She contributed to the discussion section and edited each draft. Chris Sneed was involved with the study conceptualization and assisted with recruitment of teachers for data collection. He wrote the introduction section, contributed to the discussion section, and edited each draft. Ann Berry contributed to the discussion section and edited each draft. She was the PI for this funded project and she was involved with the study conceptualization and recruitment of teachers for data collection.

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Franck, K., Sneed, C., & Berry, A. (2026). Voices from the Field: Perspectives from High School Financial Educators. Journal of Extension, 64(2), Article 13. https://doi.org/10.66752/1077-5315.5875