Teaching practices and students active learning tasks in "Food and Health" subject in school

The disputation will be held digitally, because of the Corona covid-19-situation. Spectators may follow the disputation digitally – link is available below.

Cecilie Beinert of the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Agder has submitted her thesis entitled “An unexploited potential”. LifeLab Food and Health: Assessment and Development of Teaching and Learning Practices in the Norwegian School Subject Food and Health”, and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Wednesday 28 April 2021. 

She  has followed the PhD-programme at the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Agder.

Summary of the thesis by Cecilie Beinert:

Teaching practices and students active learning tasks in "Food and Health" studies in school

The overall aim of this thesis was twofold:

• First to map teaching practices in food and health
• Then to develop and test various students active learning tasks aiming to provide students with more comprehensive food and nutrition education

Results from the thesis indicate that there is a mismatch between curriculum goals and teaching practices in food and health.

With little time for student-active work relating to the more theoretical topics within the subject, it can be challenging to fulfil the ambitious learning objectives. Therefore, the need for further development of the subject is argued for.

A total of four papers is included in the thesis

1. Specifically, the findings from paper I indicate that the use of different learning activities in food and health varies and that most of the time is spent on practical cooking. 
2. Paper II showed that the proportion of formally qualified food and health teachers in FH is low. Also, teachers with food and health credits from their teacher education were more content with teaching and felt to a greater extent to master their teaching
3. Paper III showed that there is a mismatch between curriculum guidelines and teaching practices, and teachers express how limited time is a challenge within food and health. In the context of teaching, students and teachers express the importance of student-active teaching that engages the students and is fun.
4. These feedbacks were used to develop the learning tasks which were tested at both 6^th and 9^th grade. The learning tasks activated the students to varying degrees and the overall feedback from teachers and students were positive. These findings are presented in paper IV as a possible approach to teach the more theoretical topics within food and health.

What to do as an audience member:

The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence, which is transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member.

We ask audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 09:35 at the earliest and the public defense at 12:20 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.

Opponent ex auditorio:

The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense, with deadlines. It is a prerequisite that the opponent has read the thesis. Questions can be submitted to the chair 

Stephen Seiler by e-mail stephen.seiler@uia.no