Sustainable participatory co-creation of a tailored food and nutrition education curriculum for primary school

Many studies show that the school environment, including canteen context, has the potential to affect children’s attitudes, preferences, and behavior. Unfortunately, many kinds of nutrition education interventions fail in counteracting the abandonment of the mediterranean lifestyle. One explanation can be the cultural, socio-economic, and habits differences, while the interventions are often focused on general recommendations, without tailoring the approach.

Based on the experience collected in years of teachers’ training, the aim in this project is to cocreate a primary school curriculum in collaboration with teachers and canteen staff, tailoring it on the specific school context (teachers, pupils, families...), in order to promote a gradual shift towards dietary guidelines. 

This project will start from the mapping of the educational needs, to build a holistic approach, that include teachers’ training, food and nutrition education directly with children, also involving the canteen environment and engaging families and caregivers.

It will comprehend:

• identification of a primary school willing to host the project;
• context analysis and characterization of the targeted school educational needs;
• identification of a focus group to work with in the cocreation living labs;
• definition, implementation and follow up of teachers’ training interventions, declined on different topics, such as “Sustainable choices”, “Food waste reduction”, etc.  The training will use specific tools such as jamboard and clickers and will provide credits;
• definition of cross-curricular didactic materials to provide teachers with tailored educational tools;
• definition, implementation and follow up of laboratories for pupils (gamification), in connection with schools’ canteens, to nudge towards healthier choices aiming to neophobia and food waste reduction. Laboratory outcomes will be used in activities of peer education and families’ involvement.

The whole tailored intervention will be monitored and assessed through specific questionnaires, in order to check its efficacy.

Final expectations are changes in teachers’ nutrition knowledge and in pupils' behavior, towards a neophobia reduction and a new attitude in reducing sugar/salt consumption:

• reduction of neophobia will be measured with a specific questionnaire, through the increase of familiarity with fruits/vegetables and legumes. This will be obtained thanks to the activities carried out directly with the students, in collaboration with the trained teachers;
• increase of teacher’s nutrition knowledge will be measured with pre/post tests as a result of the training intervention;
• teacher’s training toolkit (presentations, hands-on activities, etc,…) (D 7.3.1.2);
• families’ engagement in the attitude changing, monitored by specific questionnaires.