Tuwali Indigenous Financial Concepts and Their Educational Implications for Financial Management Instruction

Abstract

In Philippine multilingual classrooms heavily penetrated by Western influences and perspectives, vocabularies used for teaching are often not translated into the local language or construed locally, which creates an added burden on the part of learners to make sense of either abstract or foreign concepts. However, instructional clarity and accessibility, regardless of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, are non-negotiable elements for learners. This interdisciplinary qualitative research explored the gradual incorporation of selected Tuwali indigenous financial words and concepts in the financial curriculum to close the gap between the students’ formal and practical financial education. This study was executed with 15 purposely selected Tuwali people, the majority of whom were women and older people from the Lagawe public market in Ifugao, who consented to be interviewed about their financial knowledge and practices. A thematic analysis of qualitative data showed that Tuwali terminologies for lending, bargaining, and measurement have emerged. Responses also further revealed that participants consistently emphasized community-based practices, which are evidently premised on mutual trust and the social obligation that society owes to the community. As a form of cultural negotiations, the Tuwali use a combination of both traditional and modern measurements, which sustain accuracy and fairness in their trades. With dual reliance in handling their finances, they express a balanced treatment of their culture and the inevitable changes around them. These critical aspects open a window of instructional opportunities and priorities where Tuwali traditional financial terms and concepts could be integrated into the business curriculum to make learning more contextually responsive and culturally relevant while introducing initial inputs that may contribute to decolonizing and indigenizing efforts articulated in national language and business-related policies.