Health promotion and nutritional literacy in school programs of primary schools
- 15.05.2015
- English Articles
- Stefan Matern
- Viola Stauf
Peer-reviewed | Manuscript received: October 11, 2014 | Revision accepted: February 12, 2015
Essentials of school program work
According to the German Education Act, primary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) are obliged to record the specific objectives, emphases and organizational forms of their pedagogical approach in a school program, to update this periodically, and to evaluate its implementation [1].
School programs are key tools in school development. They should be viewed from the perspective of systems theory, whereby schools are understood as learning organizations and not as the lowest level of administrative bureaucracy. As a result, the individual school becomes more important as a pedagogical design level for school development processes [2]. Development objectives are not determined externally; instead they are expected to be produced by the members of the school. The basic assumption being that the parties involved can best judge their own circumstances and that objectives are more likely to be accepted when they are defined by the parties themselves. School programs are both the products and producers of this “self”-determination. As a result of regular evaluation of the school development processes as defined in the school program, the quality of the school should also permanently improve [3]. Health promotion and nutritional literacy may be the subject of this collective self-determination to varying degrees.
Summary
Health promotion and nutritional literacy belong to the “interdisciplinary responsibilities” of primary schools. They are expected to permeate all subjects, to shape the school environment and they involve commitment to school development and lesson quality. Their impact is influenced by the respective school culture. Insights into school culture are provided by the “school programs” prepared by individual schools. This article questions whether and how nutritional topics are communicated in the school programs of primary schools. In this regard, the article firstly refers to the theoretical background to school development processes, before providing empirical results on nutritional literacy. The database comprises 92 school programs (including “school profiles”, “mission statements”, “pedagogical approaches”) of primary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), which were analyzed according to content. The results document how nutritional literacy is currently implemented in primary schools, showing how nutrition-related content is frequently mentioned, yet how informal strategies are preferred in most cases. The data also demonstrates that there is a deficit of appropriate teacher training measures.
Keywords: nutritional literacy, health promotion, school development
