Browsing by Author "Suhonen, Lilli"

There are three contents at the home economics’ national core curriculum for basic education in 2004 and 2014. All the contents are equal to each other’s’, but home economics teachers highlight them diverse ways during home economic classes. Prior studies have indicated that teachers are used to highlight the least content related consumer education. Teachers feel that consumer education is hard to implement at home economic classes. The aim of that study is to clarify home economics teachers’ experiences on consumer education during home economics classes. The aim is to find out, what kind of teaching problems teachers have concerning consumption and financial issues. This study was carried out as a qualitative study. Data were collected by interviewing five home economics teachers. Semi-structured theme interview method was used when carrying out the interviews. Transcribed data were analysed through a qualitative contents analysis. The results show that teachers believe that consumer education should be part of basic education and home economics classes. However, teachers experienced household teaching as a subject of handicrafts and learning food and cooking skills are the most important thing. Therefore, content related consumer education was less noticeable during home economics classes. The clearest challenge of teaching consumption and financial issues is teachers’ attitude concerning consumer education. They don’t feel that the content related consumer education is as important as the two other contents. Lack of updating training and inferior quality of learning materials were also seen as a problem. The results reflect that contents related consumer education should be more in updating trainings and learning materials should be developed. The results are mainly consistent with the results of previous studies