Consumer skills are crucial for any individual who needs to use markets or uses public services. At present, the teaching of consumer competence focuses on empowerment of the consumer, instruction in participation and promotion of the consumer’s role as an active citizen with the ability to cope with various consumer environments and situations. Consumer skills can partly also be perceived as part of civic skills in our information- and technology-oriented society.
A consumer’s abilities are determined by that individual’s understanding of consumer rights and responsibilities, legislation, individual and household finances, commercialism, home management and the role all these aspects play in society and the individual’s personal life. Consumer competence combines all the skills, habits, knowledge and attitudes needed to handle most situations consumers meet in their daily lives.
There are aims which are common to several of the educational themes. We call these cross-curricular themes. Cross-curricular themes represent central aspects of education and teaching. Their objectives and contents are first incorporated into four fields of consumer education and into numerous subjects; they help integrate education and learning.
”Home management and participation” is a field relating to the practical activities of the consumers within their own operating environment. But values and skills also need to be imparted here. The three other fields, on the other hand, tend to be knowledge-based. All four fields overlap with each other and each field supports learning in each of the other fields.
These sites are based on the Nordic-Estonian document "Teaching consumer competences - a strategy for consumer education" and on the new OECD recommendations, especially “Consumer education: Policy recommendations of the OECD’s Committee on Consumer Policy”.