Intentions of formally qualified and unqualified teachers to transfer norms and values in home economics teaching
2016
Håkansson, Andreas
Historically, home economics (HE) in general, and the consumer education sections in particular, have been criticized for transferring norms and values of conservative elites to the masses. This is in stark contrast to contemporary theoretical views of a modern HE aimed at educating emancipated and critical citizens, and also to modern curricula that emphasize the consequences of consumption rather than dogma. A previous study has indicated that formally unqualified teachers see the transfer of consumption norms and values without support in the curriculum as an important objective of HE teaching, a practice that is questionable from a democratic perspective. This follow‐up study investigates to what extent formally qualified HE teachers show intentions to transfer consumption norms and values without support in the curriculum to students, using content analysis of 201 survey responses from Swedish qualified HE teachers and comparing to data from a previously published study on formally unqualified teachers. It is concluded that the qualified teachers demonstrate intentions to transfer unsupported norms and values, though, to a lower degree than unqualified teachers. The results are interpreted by adopting a values education perspective on HE. This indicates that the observed emphasis on norms and values could be seen partly as a lack of a proficient professional metalanguage among the teachers, and partly as a consequence of the focus on developing a pre‐defined moral of consumption in HE literature. The implications on how to develop HE teacher education to reduce norm and value transfer intentions are discussed based on the empirical findings and the theoretical framework.
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