c e p s Journal | Vol.

11 | No4 | Year 2021 7

doi: 10.26529/cepsj.1348

Editorial

Home Economics Education as Needed in the 21st Century

Changes in society constantly require individuals to assimilate new knowl-

edge and skills to form a lifestyle that improves their quality of life. Lifestyle is at
the centre of home economics, a multidisciplinary domain that is based on the
needs of the individual and society in a given setting and time. According to the
needs of particular societies, home economics includes priority areas such as food,
eating habits, healthy lifestyle, textile and clothing, home, consumerism, and per-
sonal and family economics. This content is treated in connection with the sus-
tainable supply of goods and the formation of a lifestyle that promotes the sustain-
able development of society. Home economics education has an important role in
children, youth and adults obtaining appropriate home economics literacy, which
in turn may positively impact the quality of life of individuals, families and society.
The aim of quality home economics education is to encourage lifelong learning.
This is also evident in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, when individuals, fami-
lies and society as a whole must change and adapt in many ways their patterns of
behaviour and lifestyle habits that are part of home economics literacy.
This special issue of the CEPS Journal highlights different aspects of
home economics. It discusses the importance of home economics in the 21st
century and home economics education, especially the areas of nutrition,
health and financial literacy.
The first paper, entitled The Role of Home Economics Education in the
21st Century: The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Disruptor, Accelerator, and Futu-
re Shaper, was written by the renowned professor and outstanding expert on
home economics education worldwide Donna Pendergast and explores the role
of home economics education in the 21st century. The author presents the five
predicted future global megatrends – globalisation, urbanisation, digitisation
cybersecurity and sustainability – as a consequence of the global pandemic. Us-
ing Voyant Tools, visualisations of the book Creating Home Economics Futures:
The Next 100 Years are presented and compared to other key literary documents
informing the field. The top ten words appearing most frequently in the book
are: home economics, food, education, future, life, family, development, new,
world and sustainable. Detailed analyses show that nutrition is one of the most
important areas of home economics. The author continues by pointing out that
education and learning have led to the repositioning of home economics as a
field, and home economics literacy as the key strategy for ensuring that the field
continues to remain relevant in the future.
8 editorial

The second paper, Modern Aspects of Home Economics Education and

Slovenia by author Martina Erjavšek, defines the basic concepts and areas of
home economics as an important part of everyday life. The paper highlights
the multidisciplinarity and importance of home economics education and lit-
eracy for the quality of life of the individual, the family and society. The author
suggests that the existing curriculum of the home economics subject in Slove-
nian primary school should undergo content updating. The curriculum should
include content on healthy lifestyle, nutrition, health, textiles, consumption,
economics, family, the environment and sustainable development. The author
suggests that theoretical knowledge should be transferred to concrete life situ-
ations and students should be given opportunities to develop an appropriate
attitude to home economics content, that the appropriateness of naming the
school subject home economics should be discussed, and that content tailored
to the needs of the individual, the family and society should be included in
home economics education.
The third paper, entitled Project LifeLab Food and Health – Innovative
Teaching for the Future: Development of Student Active Learning Tasks for Home
Economics Education in the 21st Century, was written by Cecilie Beinert, Nina Ce-
cilie Øverby and Frøydis Nordgård Vik from Norway. The authors describe the
case of food and health education, which are important areas of home economics
education and literacy, and refer to the renaming of the subject Home Economics
as Food and Health, which is a mandatory school subject in Norway. The subject
has the unique advantage of giving all students, regardless of their social back-
ground, practical skills and knowledge, life skills that are important for their fu-
ture health. The paper presents the LifeLab Food and Health project as a research-
based and innovative teaching programme, and the perception of the project in
the school setting in Norway is evaluated. This teaching programme is intended
for use in Food and Health teacher education, but also in the education of primary
and lower secondary school students in the same subject. The learning tasks deve-
loped and evaluated in the project generally received positive feedback from both
students and teachers, mainly because they were designed as practical learning
tasks targeting more theoretical content. The authors stress the importance of nu-
trition education that promotes critical thinking and the development of the skills
needed to choose healthy food and a sustainable orientation in nutrition.
The fourth paper, entitled Evaluation of the Implemented and Adopted
Curriculum in Health Education in the Czech Republic with an Emphasis on the
Drinking Regimen, focusing on the drinking regimen, was written by Michaela
Hřivnová. The main objective of the paper is to present the partial results of two
extensive educational research studies carried out by the Faculty of Education,
 c e p s Journal | Vol.11 | No4 | Year 2021 9

Palacký University Olomouc emphasising an analysis and evaluation of the im-

plemented and adopted curriculum in health education in the Czech Republic,
with a primary focus on nutrition and fluid intake. Nutrition was identified
as the most dominant sub-theme across all thematic units of health educa-
tion. The results of the subjective evaluation of the implemented curriculum
in health education suggest that in the area “Healthy lifestyle and health care”,
the subtopic “Nutrition and health – healthy diet principles, drinking regi-
men, eating disorders” was most dominant. The testing of the level of adopted
curriculum in the area of fluid intake revealed a problematic level of students’
knowledge. The issue of adequate nutrition and an appropriate diet and drink-
ing regime needs to be taught by professionally and didactically competent
teachers of health education. It is desirable to shape not only the cognitive, but
especially the affective and behavioural abilities of students. The study results
are important not only for health education, but also for home economics edu-
cation, since nutrition content is an important part of home economics literacy.
The fifth paper, entitled Education in the Area of Human Protection in
Emergency and Crisis Situations in the Context of Health Education in the Czech
Republic, was written by Jitka Slaná Reissmannová from the Czech Republic.
The present time brings a number of emergency and crisis situations includ-
ing floods, fires or Covid-19, the management of which requires the active in-
volvement of citizens. People will have to adapt to the new situation by being
properly educated and acquiring the knowledge and skills that children will
have acquired during their compulsory education. The education of students
in the area of lifestyle and health must be included in health education and
home economics, depending on how these topics are included in the national
curriculum. The objective of the paper is to present the concept of elementary
education in human protection in emergency and crisis situations in the Czech
Republic and the related concept of undergraduate teacher training. The paper
presents the results of an analysis of the curricular document governing ele-
mentary education in the Czech Republic, as well as the results of an analysis of
a health education textbook, an analysis of the study plans of selected faculties
of education in terms of human protection in emergency and crisis situations,
and a questionnaire survey focusing on the awareness of future teachers in the
area of human protection in emergency situations. The author suggest that hu-
man protection in emergency situations should be strengthened both in the
context of health education and as part of teachers’ and future teachers’ educa-
tion. This is also part of the permanent education of teachers.
The sixth paper was written by Australian author Jay R. Deagon and is
entitled I Do, We Do, You Do Home Economics: Explicit Instruction Connecting
10 naslov rubrike

Content with Ideology. The author starts the paper with a very popular sen-
tence: “Public perceptions of home economics are stereotypically that students
learn cooking and sewing at school.” The paper advocates home economics as
a holistic subject that contributes to complex issues through practical life skill
education. The author explains the reasons for learning home economics in the
21st century and presents the ideology of home economics, focusing on the who,
what, when, where and why of the disciplinary field. Deagon also discusses
the name home economics and supports the view that it should be preserved,
arguing that if the name is removed, in effect, the known and recognised ideol-
ogy is also removed. She claims that the profession is working towards contri-
butions of evidence-based home economics research to support our field and
practices. The paper also addresses the importance of home economics literacy
in the pandemic time. It turns out that the global pandemic has highlighted the
prevalence of relevant home economics skills. It is important that education in
the higher education programme also makes explicit the ideology of home eco-
nomics, so that students become more confident in advocating their discipline
The last paper was written by Gregor Torkar from the Faculty of Edu-
cation in Ljubljana and bears the title The Sustainability of Pre-Service Teachers’
Consumer Behaviour for the December Holidays. The paper presents consumer
education in Slovenia and changes in December holidays over the last decades
in Slovenia, describing the connection between consumer behaviour and cultu-
re and religion. The aim was to explore pre-service teachers’ consumer behav-
iour in the context of the December holidays in Slovenia, and to examine their
views on sustainability issues in the context of December gifting by concentrat-
ing on themes derived from qualitative data. The results show that 95.4% of the
respondents received gifts on Saint Nicholas Day, 60.0% at Christmas and 23.1%
when celebrating the New Year during their childhood, whereas today Chris-
tmas is the most common gift-giving time in December. Students most often
give their loved ones sweets, clothes and shoes, and cosmetics. The majority of
the respondents spend less than 50% of their monthly income on gifts for the
December holidays. The author emphasises the importance of education for
sustainable development and notes that further studies of this kind are needed
so that the findings can help improve consumer education.
The present issue of the CEPS Journal also includes three papers in the
Varia section. The first Varia paper is by authors Jasminka Bobić, Adrijana Ko-
scec Bjelajac, Marija Bakotić and Jelena Macan and has the title Personality Traits
and Changes in Depression Symptoms in Female University Students. It examines
the course of depressive symptoms in female students in a four-year study, and
identifies predictive values of depression symptoms on four personality traits.
 c e p s Journal | Vol.11 | No4 | Year 2021 11

The results show that after the four-year period, the symptoms of depression in-
creased both in intensity and frequency. The authors found that out of the four
personality traits, only neuroticism was a significant predictor of total value of
depression after four years, which means that students with higher scores on
neuroticism would be more likely to react more strongly and with less emo-
tional balance to a stressful period of study.
The second paper in the Varia section, entitled The Role of Parental Self-Ef-
ficacy in Explaining Children’s Academic Outcomes, was written by Andreja Bubić,
Antonela Tošić and Irena Mišetić. It investigates the contribution of parental
self-efficacy and the perception of parental involvement to students’ academic
achievement, perceived academic control and achievement goals. The obtained
results indicate parental self-efficacy as a predictor of perceived academic control
and avoidance goals, whereas perception of parental involvement predicted per-
ceived academic control, mastery approach and work avoidance goals.
The authors of the last Varia paper, entitled Self-Concept in Immigrant
School Children and the Impact of Length of Residence: Evidence from PISA 2015
for Current Educational Practice, are Sandra Figueiredo, João Marôco, Marga-
rida Alves Martins and Odete Nunes, who assessed the impact of the length of
stay in the host country on the adjustment of immigrant children to school. The
results show that students who have been in the country for a year or less have
greater difficulties and increased significant differences compared to other mi-
grant groups in the referred to indices of self-concept and inclusion. However,
other groups, especially those with periods of long-term residence between
four and five years, also face substantial levels of school maladjustment.
This issue of the journal also includes two book reviews. The first book
was written by Danielle Dreilinger and has the title The Secret History of Home
Economics. How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Chan-
ged the Way We Live. Published in 2021, the book presents a historical overview
of the development of home economics in the USA. It highlights the role of
women in the household and the areas of home economics education that are
integrated into the education process according to the needs of society. The
second book, The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Chil-
dren by authors Anca Gheaus, Gideon Calder and Jurgen De Wispelaere, was
published in 2019. It presents various topics that address the areas of children’s
education, schooling and knowledge from the perspective of philosophical qu-
estions, and prompts the reader to reflect on how to deal with children in the
present and future society.

Stojan Kostanjevec and Francka Lovšin Kozina

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Further reproduction prohibited without permission.