Abstract:

Consumer behaviour of the human population has a strong impact on the environment and overall it affects the emergence and development of ecological global problems. It is possible to meet all the consequences which are reflected on the quality of the environment. Education and shaping of responsible consumers should at least partially help to eliminate the impact of consumer behaviour. This could be the case, for example, of the current educational topic "A Responsible Consumer of the 21st Century", which should flexibly respond to the needs to change the existing patterns of consumer behaviour. The paper describes the design of the concept of the concerned topic which emerged from the analysis of the Framework Educational Programmes for secondary vocational schools. The holistic approach to this topic assumes its integration in the curriculum of general and vocational subjects across secondary vocational schools as a part of environmental education. The point is that the educational impacts on student behaviour at school manifest in their behaviour outside the school environment as well.

The significance of the designed topic is illustrated by the findings of a questionnaire survey monitoring the interest and awareness of students and fresh graduates of secondary education on the given topic. The results of the questionnaire survey have shown that students' basic awareness of the issue is good, although it has often been obtained outside of school education and therefore the integration of the curricular topic "A Responsible Consumer of the 21st Century" in current educational programmes is desirable. An important finding is that most of the students surveyed on responsible consumer behaviour perceive it as important from the point of view of the general public.

Keywords:

Curricular topic, concept, responsible consumer, environmental education, secondary vocational education, students' perceptions.