Economic Education Concepts in School Mathematics Textbooks for Middle Stage in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The world faces some economic challenges, which may cause a financial crisis. The school curricula must pay attention to its role in the field of economic education for students, to prepare them to deal with current and future economic challenges. By using descriptive analysis method, the research aimed to identify the contributions of school mathematics textbooks to economic education, through the economic concepts, for middle stage students in Saudi Arabia. The researcher identified five areas of concepts that contribute to denoting and promoting economic education: financial transactions, consumption, investment, savings, and rationalization. According to the methodological steps of the content analysis method, the results showed that the school mathematics textbooks highly contribute to promoting economic education in concepts related to the field of financial transactions (65.88%), with very large percentage. Promoting the concepts of consumption came in second place (18.83%), while the prompting economic education for students was very low at three concepts, investment, saving, and rationalization (7.08%, 6.03%, 2.18%). The research recommended the need to pay attention to all areas and concepts of economic education in mathematics textbooks at the middle stage, in balanced proportions, and to reconsider the frequency and percentages of economic education concepts included in the current mathematics textbooks, and mathematics textbooks should be developed to promote the economic education for students.