Browsing by Subject "kouluruoka"

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion of school lunch research and the discussion of developing school meals. The first aim of the study is to highlight children’s perspective and their experiences: what kind of things, actions and thoughts have an influence on children’s school meal experience. The second aim is to assess the use of the method of empathy-based stories as a method of nutrition research and in a child-centered study. The research questions of the study are the following: 1. How do children describe their school lunch experience in empathy-based stories they have written? 2. What kind of knowledge can be acquired by using the method of empathy-based stories in child-centered nutrition research? Methods. The study is a qualitative study based on a phenomenological approach which, as mentioned earlier, highlights children’s perspective. In this study, data were collected using the method of empathy-based stories. The study was a part of the Nordic ProMeal-study (Prospects for Promoting Health and Performance by School Meals in Nordic Countries). The target group was pupils who attended fourth grade in the Turku region in the academic year 2013–2014. The children were approximately 10 years old. Altogether 190 children wrote empathy-based stories. Half of the children (n = 95, analyzed n = 88) wrote a story describing a positive school meal experience and half (n = 95, analyzed n = 92) of them wrote a story of a negative school lunch experience. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. In addition, the information acquired by the method of empathy-based stories was examined from the perspective of nutrition research. Results and conclusions. As a result of the thematic analysis and the arranging of the data, the data consisted of three themes that described the foodscapes of school lunch from the children's point of view: food and eating, the school lunch situation and the social environment. The pleasantness of the food and the food itself had a significant effect on the school lunch experience in the children’s stories, and foods and dishes were also highlighted by name. In addition, the social environment of school lunch affected children’s experience and other children, friends, food service staff and teachers had impact on how children experienced the situation. The children also expressed their need for autonomy and their opportunity to influence the school lunch situation. The results of this study emphasize the need of taking into account the perspective of children when in developing school meal.

Comprehensive school pupils in Finland have a right to healthy and free school meals. The purpose of the school meals is to teach the pupils healthy ways of living, good eating habits, and to familiarize them with Finnish culture. The basis of this study lies in the hypothesis that, as no precise standards are given in the curriculum, the attitudes teachers have about nutrition education might affect the weight school meals are given in everyday life. The aim of this thesis is to research the outlooks that students in teacher education have towards school meals and its significance for students. The material for the thesis was collected with a web form, to which 83 responses were received in total. The material was analysed utilizing theory-based content analysis, at first simplifying received responses, and later assigning them to different categories. According to the research teachers think that schools meals are important for students, and the significance of school meals can be addressed from four viewpoints: 1) as an enhancer of national health, 2) as a conveyor of social and cultural information, 3) as a fortifier of self-efficacy and autonomy, 4) as value education. In the future it would be important to find out how all aspects of nutrition education could be fulfilled during school meals. At the moment is seems that health improvement and social skills are over-emphasized in nutrition education. These research findings aren't to be generalised, as qualitative analysis of a small group always brings individualism to the results. The results can, however, be seen as guidelines, they can serve as grounds for future research, and provoke conversation.

In Finland's new curriculum for comprehensive schools, pupils, teachers and school catering staff are supposed to plan together school lunch, so that school lunch is a part of education. In this study we explore different ideas how to build good relationship between three groups to co-operate together. In the school I studied there has been there have been some small thematic happenings related to school lunches, which have been a success. There are three research questions: 1. What kind of pleasant memories respondents have about school lunch. 2. What kind of improvements do you have about school lunch? 3. How can catering staff, pupils and teachers participate to make these improvements work? Methods: Pupils have been asked ideas about how to develop school lunch. Then teachers, pupils and school catering staff have been intertwined about school lunch. There came some suggestions about infrastructure, such as noise and queuing to cafeteria. Then many suggestions, eg. Soft background music, or for example Greek day with food, decorations and music. Pupils and teacher suggested it would be one class who could arrange this together with catering staff. And maybe some is happening to stop food waste? Pupils can learn a lot at school lunch about healthy food, good manners and many other things. School catering staff should be planning curriculum changes together with teachers and pupils. Next step is to have a meeting where these tree groups develop ideas to reality When co-operating together feeling of community gets stronger in the whole school.