Learning and empowerment: Designing a financial literacy tool to teach long-term investing to illiterate women in rural India Akshay Sharma a,1 , Aditya Johri b, ⁎ a Department of Industrial Design, 210 Burchard Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA b Department of Engineering Education, 616 McBryde Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA article info abstract Article history: Received 26 March 2013 Received in revised form 14 October 2013 Accepted 16 October 2013 Available online 5 November 2013 The objectives of this paper are two-fold. First, it aims to bring attention to the learning and educational needs of the almost one billion illiterate adults in the world who have little or no means for furthering their education in traditional settings. More than two-thirds of illiterate adults in the world are women and their education can have an immense impact on societal development. When we think of learning in its cultural context through social interaction, this population presents a unique vantage point to test and extend our theoretical ideas. Second, the paper presents an exploratory case study that demonstrates how research on learning can guide human empowerment by addressing everyday problems and how addressing these problems, in turn, can contribute to our understanding of how people learn. Specifically, we present a design-based research and implementation case of a financial literacy tool constructed to assist learners in understanding the advantages of long-term investment. Our findings demonstrate the advantages of leveraging the local context to construct teaching aids and supports viewing learning as the creation and enactment of situated practices. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Guided participation Design-based research Financial literacy Empowerment Development 1. Introduction Over the past couple of decades most research on learning and education has concentrated primarily on educational and learning issues of importance to advanced industrialized societies (for exception see Kral and Heath (2013)). Salient issues addressed by researchers have focused on improvement of conceptual understanding or higher level thinking skills in science and mathematics and the use of advanced information technology. Furthermore, with the exception of some recent research, the community's attention has been on formal learning environments, particularly K-12 settings. This overall research agenda has been determined by institutional constraints, funding imperatives, and areas of national needs within the context of ‘developed’ countries. In order to increase the impact of research as well as improve the theoretical and empirical preciseness of our research we need to address issues that have been sidelined and we need to reach constituents other than those traditionally targeted by the research community. Of the many potential avenues available to researchers, one target area is the almost one billion illiterate adults in the world, most of which reside in South Asia with India having the largest number (UNESCO, 2008). 2 Many of them, especially women, have lost the opportunity for formal education but are dependent on informal or non-formal learning for their empowerment and advancement. The education of this population is critical if they are to break the cycle of poverty that engulfs them and subsequently their children. 3 Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 3 (2014) 21–33 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 540 231 0653. E-mail addresses: akshay@vt.edu (A. Sharma), ajohri@vt.edu (A. Johri). 1 Tel.: +1 540 231 4545. 2 http://www-01.sil.org/literacy/wom_lit.htm, http://www-01.sil.org/sil/annualreport/2003Report.pdf, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India 3 http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/corporate/fast-facts/english/FF-Poverty-Reduction.pdf, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ pdf/report-2013/mdg-report-2013-english.pdf, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/directory/women_and_poverty_3001.htm, http://www.euractiv.com/ specialreport-un-development-goa/un-failing-women-poverty-eradica-news-530504 2210-6561/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2013.10.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Learning, Culture and Social Interaction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lcsi