Mat- og helselærernes didaktiske praksiser En casestudie på tre barneskoler

Project summary

This dissertation provides insight into how health and nutrition teachers and principals perceive and implement the school subject of food and health, as well as the school meal. The overarching goal of the dissertation was to examine the didactic practices of health and nutrition teachers within the school subject of food and health in the context of the school meal. Three sub-studies were conducted to achieve this overarching goal. These three are operationalized through three themes presented in three articles: 1. How do health and nutrition teachers at the primary level operationalize the curriculum for the subject? 2. How do teachers perceive their professional autonomy in planning the instruction in health and nutrition at the primary level? 3. Examining teachers' pedagogical practices during meals in the health and nutrition subject and in the school meal. Theoretically, the dissertation is based on Goodlad's conceptual curriculum theory. In this dissertation, this means that the three articles are situated within the three phenomena areas, the four curriculum levels, and the four process areas. The study is a qualitative comparative case study conducted at three fully integrated elementary schools in Vestland county. Data were collected through observations, interviews with health and nutrition teachers and principals, as well as documents. Data collection was carried out in the spring of 2016 and followed the same structure. Article 1 showed that health and nutrition teachers believed that cooking was the most important component of the food and health subject. Recipes appeared to be wholly dominant in the teachers' planning and implementation of instruction. The teachers' operationalization of recipes was based on their own experiential backgrounds, what the students wanted to cook, and which food items both teachers and students liked. Thus, the food items in the instruction primarily reflected individual preferences. Overall, the findings in the study indicated that the principal entrusted the entire responsibility for instruction in the food and health subject and the implementation of the school meal to each individual teacher. The fact that health and nutrition teachers felt they had full responsibility for instruction in the school subject of food and health, along with the implementation of the school meal, combined with the teachers not participating in a professional community within the school, likely reinforced the teachers' personal frameworks in their didactic practices in the food and health subject and in the school meal.