The Use of Scaffolding in the Financial Planning Classroom: An Australian Case Study

Abstract

This paper focuses on changes that can be adopted to ease students’ difficulties when challenged to prepare a personal financial plan. It reports the experiences of one Australian university’s use of a ‘scaffolding’ approach that was developed specifically to support students with this task. Such scaffolds provide a support for students to accomplish the task of constructing the financial plan by providing them with early, but temporary, supporting structures at particular points in the process. Over time these supports are removed. This pedagogic approach has proved successful and has assisted students in building confidence in, and mastery of, the financial planning process.

Keywords

• Scaffolded learning
• Teaching strategy
• Personal financial planning