The Conscious Consumerism in Fourth and Fifth Grades Social Studies Textbooks

Consumers have many rights and responsibilities during the consumption process. It is needed to raise their awareness in order for consumers to know their rights and responsibilities and act accordingly. In this context, conscious consumerism education is provided with the aim of bringing up consumers within the Turkish education system. Consumer education includes training programs and practices designed to educate individuals as a conscious consumer. Social studies lessons are one of the most important courses in raising conscious consumers. The specific objectives and achievements of the 2017 Social Studies Curriculum clearly show this effective role. In the 4th grade, the following skills are emphasized together with the skill of responsibility: exhibiting conscious consumer behavior, creating his or her own budget, understanding the income-expense balance, not wasting resources, use effectively and save money. In the 5th grade, it is aimed that the individual uses his or her rights as a conscious consumer and develops new ideas based on production, distribution, and consumption. While conscious consumerism issues are more intense in 4th and 5th grades, limited subjects such as tax, conscious resource use, and e-commerce were discussed in 6th and 7th grades. In many studies in the field of education, consumer, consumer rights and conscious consumer education topics are discussed. However, it has been determined that there was only one study examining the social studies textbooks with regard to conscious consumerism. As a matter of fact, social studies teaching programs were updated in 2017 and new textbooks were published in 2018. For this reason, the aim of the study is to examine how conscious consumerism issues are included in social studies textbooks (4th-5th grades). In this study, the document analysis method was used. The data sources of this study are 4th grade and 5th-grade social studies textbooks, which were taught in the 2018-2019 academic year. As the conscious consumerism is more focused on 4th and 5th-grade social studies textbooks, only these two books are included in the review. In the study, conscious consumerism topics were examined and the most commonly used concepts were determined. Frequencies were used to highlight the most commonly used concepts. In addition, the photographs taken from the books are used to prove how the concepts have been included in the textbooks. The study results show that in the 4th-grade textbook, conscious consumerism is covered in more detail and supported by concrete activities. In the 5th grade textbook, it has been seen that some of the subjects and concepts taught in the 4th grade were extended by the principle of helicity and some new subjects were included.