Browsing by Subject "ruokakasvatus"

Aims. The aim of this study was to find out how kindergarten teachers implement children's food education in day-care homes in Helsinki. Food education was raised as a part of early childhood education goals in 2017 and the first meal recommendations for early childhood education and care were published in January 2018 to guide early childhood food education. In recent years more attention has been paid to eating situations and food education of early childhood education when overweigh and reladed diseases have worryingly increased among children. Healthy eating habits as a child also often carry on to adulthood. In earlier studies the importance of food education to children's food behavior and habits has been found from several perspectives. However, a new study was necessary because early childhood eating and food education have been given new goals and recommendations to follow in the future. Methods. The research was carried out as a qualitative study and the material was collected by focused interviews. Eight kindergarten teachers working in kindergartens from different parts of Helsinki participated in the interviews. The interviews were conducted in November 2018 - February 2019. The data was analyzed using data-based content analysis. Results and conclusions. According to research results, kindergarten teachers' food education largely corresponds to the goals of food education in the early childhood education plan and the food education given has a positive effect on the formation of children's eating habits. As The most important goal of food education the kindergarten teachers raised food joy. In addition to food joy, the main goals of food education were to influence eating habits and to teach food habits. The kindergarten teachers used food talk, food dispensing, involment of children, food pictures, model learning and cooperation with parents as ways of food education. Besides the eating situations, food education was usually combined in children's play, where the teacher participated by responding to the child's questions. The challenges to food education were found mostly in the food education sessions outside of the eating situations.

Objectives. The objective of the study was to clarify, to describe and to analyse how the eating recommendations of the early childhood education come true especially for food education about private childminder. I also tried to clarify how the food education is put into practice in the private childminder's workday and what kind of factors promote or prevent of the food education. The earlier studies have shown that the eating during of the early childhood education has significance and that the children in the daycare have more versatile eating habits than the children that have been taken care at home. The research questions were formulated partly based on the eating recommendation of the early childhood education which gives the general guidelines for the offering and food education of the food which promotes health. The recommendation has been meant for all the operators of the early childhood education. Methods. The study was carried out as a qualitative study. The material of the study was collected as theme interviews. Seven private childminders participated in the interview. All the interviewees worked at home and they had 1–5-year-old children in the full-time daycare. The recorded material was transcribed for the analysis. Qualitative research material was analyzed by thematising. In addition to the qualitative material, I was able to use the menus from them on which it was in use. Results and conclusions. Eating recommendations of the early childhood education were followed well on private childminders. The eating situations were peaceful and unhurried, and children were encouraged to taste all the available foods without forcing. A private childminders' appreciation and respect for food appeared in many ways. Many emphasized that they wanted to prepare the meals themselves from the scratch and some preferred to use as much as possible the crops of their own yard or those of local producers. The factors which promoted the food education were working at home and small group size in which case it was possible to let the children participate in the food preparation. The private childminders were hoping to get more peer support in their work and since the work was seen as very responsible, they wished for additional education from the municipalities about food education and eating situations. All the private childminders experienced that they were food educators, but most of them had challenges to recognize the definition of the food education and the identification. Based on the results the private childminders' work could be developed by providing opportunities to participate in the education and by increasing the consciousness of the food education.

The purpose of this study is to find out what kind of tensions school actors experience and bring up as a part of the multi-professional collaborative planning and action process related to food education. In addition, this study is interested in what kind of collaborative learning is built based on these tensions. These results are conceptualized using levels of shared food sense. The study examined the collaboration process between three subject teachers and the school's food-service manager, during which a theme day for the whole school “environment friendly food day” was planned, implemented, and evaluated. So far, there has been no similar research in Finland on cooperation between food service and teaching staff or the utilization of school meals as a multidisciplinary learning entity in school communities. This study aims to respond to this research gap, as the national recommendations covering school meals (2017) and the Finnish National Curriculum (2014) guide and recommend the school community to consider school catering more widely as part of food education and multi-professional collaboration. This study was part of the RUOKATAJU (2020–2022) project. In this study data included multi-professional meetings, the teachers' open feedback questionnaire and interviews. The analysis was theory-based and utilized the definition of shared food sense and tensions. Collaborative learning was noticeable in relation to planning the ”environment friendly food day” implementation through joint understanding. Instead, the tensions that appeared during the evaluation phase provided appropriate information about the challenges related to the cooperation between the food service and teaching staff. Tensions were related, for example, to the hectic work of the food service staff, the staff resources provided by the employer, the diversity of the teacher's work, lack of information about school meal practices, the lack of professional competence or meaning. When considering further research ideas, it would be worthwhile to also make the voice of principals and the food service industry heard.

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to develop a multicultural version of the food education project Ruokakoulu – Matskolan from the perspective of the families and the children. The multicultural version has been developed in cooperation with the Ruokakoulu – Matskolan project in parallel already existing food school format. The aim of this study was to define key concepts for the new multicultural version. One aim was also to investigate what kind of concrete courses of action would promote multicultural education during the camp. The research questions of the study are the following: 1. How do the different cultures and food cultures show in the families? 2. What kind of concrete courses of action or assignments will help with carrying out the multicultural food education project taking into consideration also the perspective of the families? 3. What kind of possibilities eating together is offering for multicultural education? Methodology. The data was collected in two different ways. The first stage was the open questions questionnaire that the research families filled in. The second stage was the focus groups for children at the camp. The questionnaire and the focus groups had both the same questions. Eight families took part of the first stage and all children who attended at the camp participated to the focus groups. The data was analysed using content analysis by categorizing data into themes and then classifying into bigger unities. Results and conclusions. Culture and food culture seems to be difficult concepts for both families and for children. The food culture in the families was described varying. The multi-culturality came up when doing ethnic food choices at home and in restaurants. Eating together was an important moment from perspective of both families and children. When eating together, the whole picture was important: every step from cooking to cleaning up was done together. From the perspective of food education camp, it is important to notice that eating together is a familiar moment to learn for children.

Competitive sports are popular among young people and leisure hobby environments are recognized in the field of food education as important places for informal learning. The roles of parents and coaches are considered central in the formation of young athletes' perceptions of food. The study aimed to describe young athletes' views and experiences of eating that supports wellbeing and to analyze how young people think that the home and hobby environment support eating. This study was conducted using a qualitative research methods. The data consist of ten individual interviews with young athletes aged 13-16. The interview method was a semi- structured theme interview and the original expressions found in the data were analyzed using theory-driven content analysis. The analysis followed a three-step process, which included data reduction, clustering and abstraction. The pursuit of healthiness and a preference for home-cooked food are related to young people's eating. Eating out was very unusual, because restaurant food is not considered to meet the requirements set for an athlete’s diet. There were few species-specific differences in healthy eating in the data. According to young people, family was the most important support for eating, and family support was described by three upper categories: teaching eating practices, healthy family lifestyles, and relying on parents' knowledge. The support received from the coaches ranged from short reminders to more detailed nutrition advice. Experiences about the lack of coach support were also brought up. The results of the study shed light on young athletes’ views and experiences of the support provided by food environments. The results are important in supporting the food education of athletes, when we want to understand young people's experiences of eating that supports well-being. We still need more information about how leisure environments support young people’s eating and what kind of cooperation between different actors takes place in food education environments. Further research could focus on how sports coaches or hobby activity instructors view supporting children's and young people's eating.

Sustainable food education aims to promote consumers' knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values related to the sustainable food system. In the national curriculum for basic education (2014) the topics related to the sustainable food system are present especially in home economics. Based on previous studies, one factor that affects the implementation of sustainable food education in home economics is the teaching material dealing with the subject area. However, little research has been done on sustainable food education and related teaching materials. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Finnish home economics textbooks support sustainable food education. In this study the textbooks were seen as tools of sustainable food education. The research objectives were to study what topics related to sustainable food consumption are presented in the home economics textbooks and what values are present within the texts. The research material consisted of three home economics textbooks published after the current national curriculum for basic education (2014). The investigation focused on the texts which concerned both sustainability and food consumption. The data was analyzed with a qualitative theory-based content analysis. Shalom Schwartz's value theory was used in the examination of values. The studied home economics textbooks cover sustainable food consumption extensively and the contents in the three studied textbooks are rather similar. The textbooks depict sustainable food consumption as food consumption that promotes individual’s health and well-being, is ecological and economical, ethical, and responsible and in which planning and moderation of consumption and maintaining one’s own food culture and traditions are important. In practice, this implies avoiding food waste and favoring local and organic food to mention a few. In the context of sustainable food consumption health is the most emphasized value in the textbooks. The values of universalism, benevolence, and tradition are also relevant, while hedonism and conformity are given less importance. The research provides information on the contents related to sustainable food consumption in the textbooks. This information can help identify gaps in the teaching materials and support supplementing them.

Aims. This thesis discusses the possibilities of participative and action-based food education in home economics education and school mealtimes in comprehensive schools. The aim of this thesis is to discuss how the co-operation and combining of home economics teaching and school lunches can assist in reaching the goals of food education, such as the development of food sense. The study is based on previous research within food education, school lunches and student participation, as well as the national documents for steering education. School mealtimes as situations for formal learning are not vastly studied in Finland. The aim of the participative food education is to help students reach significant goals of well-being and lifelong learning, as well as increase the number of students who eat diversely. Methods. The data were gathered with half-structured thematic interviews. The individual interviews took place in three schools in Helsinki. In each school, either home economics teachers, school catering staff, or both, were interviewed. In total, there were six informants and the interviews were 17-35 minutes. These interviews produced 62 sheets of literal transcriptions. The data is analyzed thematically. The results were interpreted with the help of the definition participation and participativeness (Niemi et al. 2018) and the three-level model of food sense (Janhonen et al. 2018). Results and conclusions. Three main themes were found in the analysis: the educational potential of school lunches, student-led development and inclusion, and school’s adults as enablers of food educational cooperation. The interviewees’ degree of self-awareness of their role as food educators was found to be an important factor behind formal food education. Co-operational food education benefits from the recognition of participation as an aim of pedagogical activities. In addition, different co-operative projects, school celebrations, themes connected with sustainable development, and including students as responsible participants help the co-operation. On the other hand, lack of resources, fragmented nature of employment tasks and schools catering staff’s shortage of education in (food)education prevented the co-operation in this study. The study implies that educational aims midst school lunches are not systematic nor target-oriented, at least as co-operative effort since they lack both resources and action plans on the school level. Utilizing the three-level model of food sense in the evaluation of the realization of food education showed that in the context of formal schooling, the structural changes in methods are challenging to execute or achieved without the support and commitment of school’s adults. This study concludes that the development of formal food education to become more participative demands expertise and time, as well as school’s food educators’ personal passion and interest in the matter.

Introduction: Existing studies show that taste preferences and food behavior begin to develop during early childhood and that they are strongly influenced by early experiences related to food and the example received from grown-ups around. Hence, early childhood education holds a key role in promoting healthy food habits to children. Early childhood education also endorses health equality by offering a chance to familiarize oneself with a variety of different foods. Health and joy from food - meal recommendations for early childhood education and care, published in 2018, presents general guidelines for a healthy diet during childhood. The key objectives of food education in early childhood are to create a positive relationship towards food, teach children about food chain and food cultures, familiarize them with different food products, and to create a positive, and a calm atmosphere during mealtimes. High-quality food education can promote public health and prevent obesity and chronic diseases. The example given by childcare professionals affect the development of food behavior of children. Therefore, it is crucial that these professionals feel equipped to engage in food education and that they have enough skills, knowledge and resources to do so. Objectives: This paper studies the state of food education in childcare units. The aim is to discover whether childcare professionals feel capable to act as food educators in addition to their other responsibilities. Furthermore, it is studied whether the feeling of high readiness is linked to higher food education among childcare professionals. This Master’s thesis was carried out as a part of the Food Education project by the Finnish Heart Association. The aim of the Food Education project is to promote meal recommendations for early childhood education and care nationally so that all childcare units would have similar premises for high quality food education. Methods: This cross-sectional study was executed with an online based questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to the childcare units of the cities of Tampere and Akaa and to individual childcare professionals through the Finnish Heart Association. The questionnaire was designed for the purpose of this study and it consisted of three parts. Respondents were asked about their background information, how often they commit to specific food education activities, and about their beliefs towards food education. The data was analyzed with a principle component analysis (PCA) and sum variables were created based on the results of the analysis. Four food education strategies were recognized. The readiness of the professionals was divided into five categories based on the PCA results. Sum variables were analyzed with an analysis of variance (ANOVA) between groups which were formed based on background information. In addition, logistical regression analysis was conducted to discover the association between food education strategies and the self-reported feeling of readiness. Results: In total 173 educators, including childcare directors (n= 9), teachers (n = 71) and nurses (n = 93), replied to the questionnaire. Four food education strategies were recognized: an educator driven strategy, a communication-based strategy, a body focused strategy, and a child driven strategy. The ANOVA revealed that childcare directors use significantly more the child driven food education strategy compared to other groups whereas participants with no higher than secondary level education engage significantly less in body focused food education. A majority of respondents reported feeling high capability to act as food educators and considered food education to be an important part of children’s health promotion. Also, they appreciated a child focused approach and the relevance of food education as such. The support received from the work community and the work environment was considered to be rather poor especially among the teachers and the nurses. However, high feeling of capability was not associated with a higher frequency of any of the food education strategies. Conclusions: Food education in childcare today is heterogenic and dominated by educator driven strategies. Body focused strategies are the rarest. The educators experience quite high levels of readiness to engage in high-quality food education, but the support received from the work community and environment is low. Also, the resources are limited and there is a need for common ground rules and processes. In order to meet the national goals of food education, more resources and engagement of the work community is needed.

The purpose of this study is to determine the policies related to household food waste as well as what kind of changes has occured in it over the past decades and how these changes reflect any changes in the society. The changes related to these policies are examined by interviewing three generations from the same family and searching for similarities and differences in their household policies related to food waste. In addition, this study seeks to examine the role of food education on food behaviour. The frame of references in this study is based on the concepts of household activities, everyday management, sustainable development and food education. The study is a qualitative interview study. The data was collected by individual theme interviews. The group of interviewees consisted in total of nine persons, three generations from three different families. They were born between the years 1931-1991 and six of them were women and three men. The data was analyzed by theming. Household food waste is generally considered a negative thing that should be avoided. This study revealed that the oldest generation has the most negative relation to food waste and also produces the least. The difference is clear between the oldest and the middle generation, but decreases between the two younger generations. Changes in the society were experienced to have an impact on household food waste, especially the migration from the countryside to the cities and the creation of a so-called culture of gluttony. During Finland's independence our food economy has developed from depression and periods of shortage towards abundance. Food education was seen to play a key role in reducing household food waste. The interviewees highlighted the importance of upringing in the formation of their own food behaviour as well as for the future. The results of this study help to understand what causes can be found behind the phenomenon of food waste as well as the fact that also the social context has an impact on the production of household food waste..

Tavoitteet. Varhaiskasvatuksessa työskentelevien on tärkeää tiedostaa, millainen vaikutus ruokailutilanteilla on lapsen pitkän aikavälin ruokasuhteeseen, ja millä tavoin ruokasuhteen muodostumista tulee tukea. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, millaisia tavoitteita varhaiskasvatuksen ruokailutilanteille asetetaan virallisessa ruokailusuosituksessa. Tutkimuskysymyksiä muodostui lopulta yksi: millaisia tavoitteita varhaiskasvatuksen ruokailutilanteille asetetaan Terveyttä ja iloa ruoasta - varhaiskasvatuksen ruokailusuosituksessa? Menetelmät. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisena tutkimuksena tarkastelemalla Terveyttä ja iloa ruoasta – varhaiskasvatuksen ruokailusuositus -asiakirjaa. Aineisto rajattiin juuri tähän asiakirjaan siksi, että se on ainoa erillinen varhaiskasvatusta koskeva ruokailusuositus. Aineisto analysoitiin koodaamalla ja käyttämällä aineistolähtöistä sisällönanalyysiä. Ensin aineistosta etsittiin kaikki ruokailutilanteelle asetetut tavoitteet, jonka jälkeen ne teemoiteltiin sen mukaan, ketä tai mitä tavoite koskee. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Tutkimuksen tuloksena selvisi, että ruokailutilanteissa osoitetaan tavoitteita kolmelle eri kategorialle. Nämä kategoriat ovat aikuisen toiminta, lapsen kehittyvät taidot ja ruokailuympäristö. Tavoitteita oli jokaisessa kategoriassa useita, suurimman kategorian ollessa aikuisen toiminnalle asetetut tavoitteet. Tuloksista voidaankin päätellä, että aikuisen rooli ruokailutilanteen rakentajana ja lapsen ruokasuhteen tukijana on suuri.