For the very first time, in the Spring of 2023, the European Commission (EC) carried out a survey across all member states to assess their level of financial literacy. This survey complements other national surveys and fills an important gap because it provides a consistent metric that allows comparisons among the European Union (EU) countries. The motivation behind the EC’s survey stems from the need to advance the state of financial literacy to safeguard financial stability and promote important projects, such as the creation of a Capital Markets Union. In this paper, we analyze these new data and confirm findings in the literature about the importance of being financially knowledgeable to achieve good financial outcomes. Unfortunately, the survey also confirms that barely one in two individuals, on average in the EU, is financially literate.

During the course of my teacher training, I have encountered two distinct classroom contexts for oracy: a term that refers to the ability to express oneself in speech. At my first placement school, very few students were willing to answer questions or present arguments in front of their peers. Conversely, the majority of students at my second placement school are keen to demonstrate their knowledge, yet often speak over one another during discussion tasks. In both schools, dialogue is mainly directed towards the teacher; students rarely offer extended answers during lessons, and oral reasoning and argumentation generally take place as a precursor to written work. I therefore wanted to implement a sequence of lessons where the learning was intentionally carried out and measured through student talk and cooperation. In particular, I wanted to examine how far teaching specific oracy skills and providing informal scaffolded opportunities for presentational and exploratory talk can support the development of historical thinking skills in Year 7 (age 11): in other words, students' ability to consider multiple historical perspectives; to appreciate the difference between modern and ancient values; to critically engage with historical terminology, and to present and justify an argument. Students' responses were generally positive and engagement raised. I conclude with further thoughts about future practice.

Field schools are foundational training for archaeologists and the corresponding methods for instruction are largely consistent within the discipline. The expectation is that at some point early in their careers students will enroll in a field school. To participate, students must pay summer tuition, dedicate a minimum of four weeks (usually longer) to full-time fieldwork, and in many cases travel to remote locations. The reality is that for many students such expectations make field school participation an impossibility—and ultimately make archaeology a nonviable career option for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Offering local field opportunities within the context of a regular school year alleviates those problems. A recent field school in north Idaho demonstrated how traditional field school structure excludes many students and how archaeologists can adjust instruction to make field training more accessible to students.

Financial literacy is today globally recognized as an essential life skill. However, many young adults have large debts due to consumption loans, and the situation in Sweden is escalating. Previous research has indicated a low financial literacy, and that the prevalence of mental illness is high within the group. In this report, we studied financial literacy, personal financial situation, and self-reported mental illness in a Swedish sample, comprising 2 057 respondents between 18 and 29 years. Our main findings indicate that financial literacy is lower than has previously been described, especially concerning knowledge about inflation. One in four reported they had consumption loans, one in three had loans to relatives, almost half of the respondents had perceived financial difficulties during the past year, and one out of ten had turned to the budget and debt advisor to receive help. Women showed lower financial literacy compared to men, indicating an important gender aspect. Our findings per se are sounding the alarm for policymakers to immediately pay attention in order to prevent the risk of becoming overindebted early in life. The present study highlights the urgent need to further study the complex relationship between financial literacy, personal financial situation, and mental illness among young adults.

Vassar College was one of the few North American undergraduate institutions to offer a concentration in Victorian studies. From 1970 until 2021, when the program transformed into Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, nearly ninety majors and minors passed through the program. Drawing on surveys and interviews with the program's graduates, the essay contends that Vassar's Victorian studies program engendered certain mental habits as well as specific approaches to activism, which the essay broadly defines to include activist scholarship and journalism, working for change within institutions, and reimagining family life and child-rearing. The Vassar alums who participated in the surveys and interviews made direct links between their activist commitments and an undergraduate education that emphasized primary-source research as well as multidisciplinarity.

A major problem in collections management is the lack of training about collections in all facets of archaeology. Ignorance about both ethical obligations and practical steps associated with collections is arguably the leading contributor to the ongoing curation crisis. This work summarizes shortcomings in collections training in academia and in cultural resource management, and it proceeds to identify some steps that can be taken to provide training for students and professional archaeologists. The overriding argument is that more training in all aspects of collections is absolutely essential to addressing and beginning to mitigate the overwhelming problems the discipline faces in caring for archaeological collections.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of Happy House, a universal school-based programme, in reducing adolescents’ depressive symptoms and improving their mental well-being, coping self-efficacy and school connectedness. This was a school-based, two-arm parallel controlled trial. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Data were collected at recruitment, and at 2 weeks and 6 months post-intervention. Mixed-effect models were conducted to estimate the effects of the intervention on the outcomes. A total of 1,084 students were recruited. At 2 weeks post-intervention, the effect size on depressive symptoms was 0.11 (p = 0.011) and the odds of having clinically significant depressive symptoms were lower in the intervention compared to the control (0.56, p = 0.027). Both of these were no longer significant at 6 months post-intervention. Psychological well-being mean scores in the intervention were significantly higher than in the control at 2 weeks post-intervention (effect size 0.13). Coping self-efficacy mean scores were significantly higher in the intervention group at both 2-week and 6-month post-intervention (effect sizes from 0.17 to 0.26). Data support the potential of Happy House to reduce the prevalence of adolescent mental health problems and to promote positive mental health in the school context in Vietnam.

A significant number of young people throughout the world are experiencing mental health concerns. Many young people will develop their first mental health concerns or will be managing their symptoms while enrolled in institutions of higher education. Although many colleges and universities are aware of the significant mental health needs among their students, the mental health and psychosocial needs of students often exceed the availability of resources and cultural and contextual barriers, such as stigma, may further impede access to care. Such gaps and barriers in mental health may lead to poor prognosis as well as negative educational and social outcomes. We propose that non-specialist delivered mental health and psychosocial interventions may play a critical role in reducing the gaps in care for students in higher education. In particular, non-specialist delivered care can complement existing specialized services to provide stepped models of care. Importantly, the adaptation and implementation of non-specialist delivered mental health and psychosocial support interventions in higher education may lead to innovative strategies for increasing access to care in this context, but may lead to adaptations that could apply to contexts outside of higher education as well.

In recent years, the reality of global migration has brought the lack of understanding of mental health needs across different cultures into sharp focus. Psychology programs are not up to date on global issues and are often experienced as inadequate in preparing graduates to meet the challenges of society today. The field of education and training in psychology has hardly evolved since the last two decades. On the other hand, the mental health needs arising locally and globally require a knowledge base and a set of skills future psychologists need to have in order to be able to work and grow professionally. In addition, most psychologists in the western world are bound, at some point in their career, to be in contact with immigrants or refugees to offer them services and be a source of support for such a vulnerable population. Also, the field of psychology is witnessing more movement among psychologists than ever before, whereby many professionals move to another country, to work, volunteer, gain or provide training, consult and much more. This requires a certain level of preparation, which psychologists need to be aware of and ready to engage in before and after they move. This article highlights different psychology programs around the world that include global mental health in their programs. It discusses essential aspects and skills that psychologists need to learn to be prepared to work globally with various populations and to expand their skills beyond service providing to more management and policy work. Topics such as human rights and social justice, advocacy, health management and policymaking are addressed as important competencies to be gained during the education and training of future psychologists.

Earlier acquisition of English is associated with better academic performance for dual language learners (DLLs), but large-scale, prospective, longitudinal studies examining how trajectories for English acquisition relate to school-based outcomes, accounting for relevant covariates, are rare. We explored how the grade in which DLLs (N = 17,548; 47% female; 80% free/reduced-price lunch; 86% Latino, 10% Black, and 4% White/Other) acquire English proficiency, defined by the school district, relates to academic outcomes (grade retention, GPA, reading and math test scores) in 5th grade, controlling for gender, ethnicity, poverty, and school readiness skills at age 4. Earlier acquisition of English, especially before 2nd grade, predicted better performance on each 5th grade outcome. Earlier proficiency in English was even more important for 5th grade outcomes for those with initially high cognitive skills, Latino/Hispanic DLLs (compared to Black DLLs), and those not in poverty. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

Language diversity is under threat, with between a third to a half of all languages considered endangered, and predicted rates of loss equivalent to one language per month for the rest of the century. Rather than reviewing the extensive body of linguistic research on endangered languages, this review focuses specifically on the interdisciplinary transfer of methods developed in conservation biology, macroecology and macroevolution to the study of language endangerment and loss. While the causes of language endangerment and loss are different to those for species, studying patterns of diversity of species and languages involves similar analytical challenges, associated with testing hypotheses and identifying causal relationships. Solutions developed in biology can be adapted to illuminate patterns in language endangerment, such as statistical methods that explicitly model phylogenetic nonindependence, spatial autocorrelation and covariation between variables, which may otherwise derail the search for meaningful predictors of language endangerment. However, other tools from conservation biology may be much less use in understanding or predicting language endangerment, such as metrics based on International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) criteria, population viability analysis or niche modelling. This review highlights both the similarities and the differences in approaches to understanding the concurrent crises in loss of both linguistic diversity and biodiversity.

Behavioral economics and field experiments within the social sciences have advanced well beyond academic curiosum. Governments around the globe as well as the most powerful firms in modern economies employ staffs of behavioralists and experimentalists to advance and test best practices. In this study, we combine behavioral economics with field experiments to reimagine a new model of early childhood education. Our approach has three distinct features. First, by focusing public policy dollars on prevention rather than remediation, we call for much earlier educational programs than currently conceived. Second, our approach has parents at the center of the education production function rather than at its periphery. Third, we advocate attacking the macro education problem using a public health methodology, rather than focusing on piecemeal advances.

The prospect of a profound transformation in the relationship between the UK and the European Union has raised a range of economic, social and political concerns (Dhingra et al., 2016; Booth et al., 2015; Irwin, 2015; Ebell and Warren, 2016). Whilst the ultimate shape of a negotiated post-Brexit settlement is uncertain, the potential loss or reduction in access to EU funding streams, educational mobility, EU labour market access, and changes to employment rights and regulations will impact significantly upon young people across the UK. Underlining this, the transition between education and employment has been evidenced as a period when young people experience increased risk of poverty and social exclusion (MacDonald, 2011; Furlong and Cartmel, 2004; Ellison, 2014; ILO, 2016). This article provides an analysis of the role of EU funding streams and operational programmes directed at young people's transitions between education and employment across the UK. The co-ordinated use of EU funding instruments aimed at rebalancing economic and social inequalities between wealthier and poorer regions and groups within the EU is evidenced as improving labour market outcomes for young people living in the most disadvantaged regions of the UK. In light of this, the article contends that future post-Brexit UK governments will need to develop redistributive investment strategies within coherent policy architectures and inclusive forms of governance to ensure the continued delivery of operational programmes for young people which are relevant, effective and sustainable at a local level.

Using the China Household Income Project 2007 data and imputing health and education benefits through microsimulation, this article provides evidence on how the inclusion of health and education benefits might change the estimated size, structure and redistributive effects of the Chinese social welfare system. We find that the inequalities in social welfare systems across the urban–rural–migrant populations persisted, reinforcing the multidimensional inequalities in health and education well documented in the literature. Imputed health benefits were larger and played a greater redistributive role in urban areas than for their rural and migrant peers. Imputed education benefits, on the other hand, played a more equalising role in rural and migrant populations as compared to the urban population. These results highlight the importance for China to use health and education benefits effectively to mitigate such multidimensional inequalities and enhance the life opportunities of disadvantaged citizens, especially children.

Conditional cash transfers have come to play a prominent role in the social policy landscape in Latin America and especially in Brazil in recent years. Evaluations of their impacts, however, have focused on limited short-term outcomes, particularly consumption and school enrolment and attendance rates. Long-term outcomes have received comparatively little attention. This article reviews the existing evidence on the long-term impacts of CCTs, focusing on the underlying assumptions in the CCT model for intergenerational poverty reduction. In doing so, it questions the notion that CCTs can indeed interrupt the intergenerational cycle of poverty through human capital investments that are thought to lead to expanded opportunities in the labour market. Moreover, it highlights the need for more research on the social processes that may influence young beneficiaries’ life trajectories and experiences in poverty.