LifeLab Food and health. Innovative teaching for the school of the future
The teaching in the Food and health subject aims to contribute to promote a healthy lifestyle, gain insight and skills in critically choosing and reflecting on food and meals and stimulate the students to prepare food. When looking into the structure of today's food and health lessons, it mainly consists of practical work with cooking. Comparing this to the aim of the subject, what seems like a common challenge, is to nourish the student's creative abilities and foster critical thinking. Another challenge is to provide children training in making conscious decisions and to motivate them to comply to a healthy lifestyle.
LifeLab- Food and health is a three-year long project (2017-2020). The objective of LifeLab is to develop and evaluate different student active activities for the Food and health subject with the aim at increasing children's knowledge and understanding of the correlation between food and health.
The study uses multiple methods. First, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to all primary and lower secondary schools in Norway. 1170 food and health teachers completed the questionnaire regarding different aspects of the subject. The results showed that most teachers (71%) reported using learning activities where students were encouraged to use their senses, followed by exploratory/experimental activities (65%), digital tools (56%) and flipped classroom (14%). Lack of equipment, non-optimal premises and economic factors were most important barriers to good teaching in FH. All teachers highlighted engaged teachers as most important for learning.
Food and health teachers use of the different learning activities investigated in this study varied. Engaged teachers are important for learning, whereas lack of equipment, non-optimal premises and economic factors are barriers to good teaching. Further, we found that 49% of the teachers at the secondary school level had formal Food and Health education despite national requirements. Also, a higher proportion of the formally educated group showed more contentment with teaching and reported to a greater extent mastering teaching (p≤0.001) compared to the non-educated group.
Secondly, focus group and individual interviews was carried out among school leaders and food and health teachers and students having or just finishing their year of food and health. The aim of the interviews was to gain insight in what challenges there are and what wishes there are to consider when developing the activities. Finally, classroom video and audio recording of the activities were conducted to evaluate the activities which was developed in collaboration with teacher students. We found that the students’ learning process was stimulated while they engaged with the learning tasks by working in groups, by being active in interaction, dialogue, communication and collaboration, and by being given the opportunity to listen and argue. Language was used as a pedagogical tool and was central in the students’ learning process. Both the students and their teachers valued the active and practical outline of the learning tasks. Through interviews, we explored teachers’ and students’ perspectives and experiences of current classroom practices in Food and Health. Our findings suggest there is a mismatch between curriculum guidelines and teaching practices. Although teachers understood the benefits of nutrition education, practical cooking activities
were prioritised. Three key themes were identified; students and teachers value cooking and limited time, which both explain this mismatch from the perspectives of students and teachers, and pedagogical solutions to resolve the mismatch, which summarises novel learning activities suggested by students and teachers as a solution for this mismatch.
Project leader: Frøydis N. Vik
PhD student: Cecilie Beinert (disputation April 2021)
PhD supervisors: Frøydis N. Vik, Nina C. Øverby, Gun Åbacka, Paivi Palojoki
Project start: 2017. Project end 2020.
Funding: University of Agder
The ProDiG project (Professional digital competence for students and teacher educators in elementary teacher education, 2018-2020)
The aim of the ProDiG project (Professional digital competence for students and teacher educators in elementary teacher education, 2018-2020) in the subject Food and Health, is to develop and strengthen the professional digital skills of both university teachers and students in this subject. In their studies of Food and Health, both at the university and in their practice at schools, teacher students will try different digital solutions that promote learning in Food and Health. In this way, newly qualified teachers will be better able to meet both the curriculum and the school's requirements and expectations for professional digital competence.
LEAD (Learning and digitalisation in home economics education)
The LEAD-project (2018-2021) is a project funded by Erasmus+ and consist of a group of teacher educators and researchers in home economics from 4 Nordic-Baltic universities (Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Norway). The LEAD-project has two intertwined intentions. First, to find methods how to implement ICT purposefully in home economics lessons. The innovation lies in a novel understanding of how to effectively use digital technologies in home economics education to promote students learning in a real way. Today, there are few existing pedagogical solutions for home economics teachers to apply in subject teaching. Therefore, LEAD is interested in finding solutions that would give students help during the learning process when constructing knowledge individually or in the group. Second, we are interested in finding innovative ideas for novel learning tasks, where students are experimenting and constructing knowledge. Putting school-learned knowledge into action helps students to transfer their knowledge into practice in everyday situations.
Early efforts in food and health (2018-2020)
The Norwegian Association for teachers in food and health applied to the Gjensidige Foundation for financial support to carry out a study to gain insight into how food and health was organized and taught in grade 1-4. The aim of the study was to reveal the competence of those who teach, organization of the teaching and what challenges the teachers have. The findings from this study will be used to develop an in-service training course for teachers, primarily for teachers without formal education in food and health teaching in grade 1-4. A total of 24 interviews were conducted at 12 randomly selected schools from different parts of Norway. Both principals and teachers were interviewed. The study showed that it is quite random who teaches and how the teaching in food and health is carried out at each school.