Teaching Finance through a Social Science Lens

This article considers the contribution of social science in the teaching of finance based on personal teaching experience in the fields of both market finance and corporate finance. We show how adopting a social science lens can help to change teaching practice in the field. First, due to the social science research epistemology, we apply an inductive method based on observations of real facts, e.g., a financial scandal, a crisis, evaluation of a product, the bank credit granting process. Second, we portray objectified finance as it actually works. Third, we focus on deconstruction to offer a fresh take on the world of finance with the help of critical analysis. Depending on the finance course and the target audience, this can be done through the lens of techniques, financial organisation or an analysis of institutions. The paper offers new ideas to rejuvenate finance education. More specifically, by teaching finance through the lens of social science, we can abandon the monolithic and dogmatic framework of finance theory and instead propose a pluralism of theoretical frameworks and a continuum of complementary interpretations. In addition to developing students' open-mindedness in the field of finance, the inductive approach starting from by how finance actually works enriches the material provided by ‘seminal' finance books that are mostly confined to mainstream theory. Social science is a developing and rich area of research, but, to our knowledge, its implications for finance teaching have yet to be analysed.