Teachers’ Perceptions of Consumer Education in Primary Schools in Finland

Abstract

Operating in today’s markets is challenging due to information overload and an expanding choice of products. Children also encounter these complex markets at an early age. Providing consumer education in schools is an excellent opportunity to enhance their ability to think critically and increase their awareness. However, it would be a mistake to ignore the interconnections between consumer education and entrepreneurship education, since active and innovative people are also a prerequisite for future development. Taking advantage of the opportunity to provide consumer education in schools requires teachers to be familiar with consumer issues. This article aims to discuss the perceptions and experiences that primary school teachers in Finland have regarding children’s consumer education in schools. This study was conducted using the phenomenographic qualitative method to analyse data from teacher interviews. The analysis revealed a set of categories that describes the various ways the participants perceive and experience children’s consumer education in schools. These categories include themes, actors, teaching methods and the challenges and expectations teachers relate to children’s consumer education. The findings of this study are worth exploring when planning how to support teachers’ consumer educational competences for a sustainable future. The authors consider that this article is especially valuable for curriculum planners, educators, consumer organisations and parents’ associations, because it shed light on teachers’ perspectives about consumer education.

The role of social studies teachers in enhancing consumption education in Jordan during COVID – 19 Pandemic

“…While there are no differences with statistical significance between means of the teachers' response to the questionnaires fields as a whole according to the experience variable except the consumption awareness field, the researchers might attribute that to the absence of the sufficient training regarding consumption education topics for all teachers, or the absence of the sufficient knowledge about its topics. And this result is compatible with the results of the studies by (Harmoinen's, 2019& Soafi, 2017.…”

“…Hence, the teachers should direct the students towards the appropriate consumption behaviour through a number of approaches, including consumption education which might control their purchase and consumption behaviour. Pajari & Harmoinen (2019) add that there is the need for providing opportunities to the teachers to be aware of the consumption issues, because this will contribute to enhancing consumption education at schools, (McGregor, 2018). Consumption Education is identified as developing the knowledge, concepts, trends and values that help the students in organizing their behaviour in consumption (Oreeqat, & Al-Qawood, 2018).…”

“…The Ministry of Education in USA has divided the consumption education in four axis: making consumption decision, economy, financial and personal issue, consumer's rights and duties (Isa, 2018). Also, there are many studies that have addressed consumption education, including Pajari & Harmoinen's (2019) which reached teachers in Finland. The study shows that teachers feel that they have great influence in teaching consumption to primary schools' students.…”

Entrepreneurship as a Neglected Pitfall in Future Finnish Teachers’ Readiness to Teach 21st Century Competencies and Financial Literacy: Expectancies, Values, and Capability

“…For these competencies to be adapted to the school context at all educational levels, teachers also need to develop new, non-cognitive informal learning and social and emotional learning [41]. Furthermore, to support their pupils' learning, teachers need not only the relevant competencies, but also an entrepreneurial and innovative spirit themselves [21,42]. In the present study, our aim is to examine future Finnish teachers' readiness to put the present national curriculum into practice.…”

“…In the financial domain, current research suggests, for example, that teachers show great uncertainty in financial knowledge and identify themselves as having a low level of financial literacy overall [19,20]. In terms of consumer education, teachers perceive this as a challenge with contradictory values and the complex markets children encounter already from an early age [21]. Moreover, despite teachers' perceived interest or their given importance in a subject matter, they may lack the perceived competence [22,23] or self-efficacy [24] in teaching these skills, in addition to lacking actual content knowledge.…”