Home Economics Teachers' Intentions and Engagement in Teaching Sustainable Development

Abstract

Home Economics (HE) teachers can have a central role in teaching sustainable development (SD) to young adolescents through everyday household management and the promotion of personally and globally sustainable well-being. How well the teachers cope with this task is not well known. The objective of this study was to survey Finnish HE teachers' perceptions of their current practice, coping, and future intentions in terms of teaching SD. Enablers and inhibitors to carrying out this task were further investigated. Findings from this survey suggest that HE teachers have adopted sustainability at a personal level, but often lack the resources and incentives to teach it. Ways to promote cross-curricular projects and wider integration of SD into HE are discussed.

Keywords:

• sustainability
• home economics
• teaching
• inhibitors

Acknowledgements

We thank Donna Pendergast, from Griffith University, Queensland, Australia, and Yvonne Dewhurst, from University of Aberdeen, Scotland, for the permission to use their questionnaire in this study.