Consumer education in secondary schools in Botswana: Perceptions of home economics teachers

Consumer education is interdisciplinary and empowers students with decision making skills and enhances their roles as competent consumers, producers, and citizens. The purpose of this study was to assess the perceived needs and explore the quality of the consumer education modules taught in senior secondary schools in Botswana.; Participants were home economics senior secondary school teachers from 20 schools. The schools were randomly sampled from a list of all 27 senior secondary schools in the country. Findings revealed that the majority (99.0%) of the home economics/consumer education teachers were females. There were no teaching resources such as prescribed textbooks, teachers' instructional manual guides and video tapes on consumer education in the schools. Some teachers borrowed books from other disciplines such as commerce and business studies and some of the books had inadequate information on consumer education. Almost all the schools had computers but their use was restricted to students who were enrolled in computer awareness classes. The quality of consumer education was perceived to be generally good in terms of modules' meeting goals and objectives and essentiality of objectives to students' learning. Teachers perceived themselves competent to teach each of the consumer education objectives/topics. A challenge to the teachers was deciding the depth of content to cover when teaching each objective/topic. The comprehensiveness of the consumer education content to prepare students for work and family life was questionable. The majority of the teachers were not involved or active in professional development activities although they knew these could enhance their consumer knowledge and skills. Recommendations were made for consideration in the review of the teaching of consumer education.