Development of Job Description of Nutrition Teacher by the DACUM Method

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to provide a standard job description for a nutrition teacher placed in primary and secondary schools by analyzing their duties. DACUM is an acronym for 'Developing A CUrriculuM'. It was used by experts to determine the job duties, tasks and task elements to establish the job descriptions of a nutrition teachers through the development of a DACUM chart. An expert panel consisting of 10 nutrition teachers participated in a DACUM workshop and derived nutrition teacher's DACUM chart. A total of 1,550 nutrition teachers across the country were targeted as the survey subjects for validation of the DACUM chart through their perception of the frequency, importance, and difficulty of each item in the job description. A tree structure, criticality analysis, and contents validity index were added for verification. The definition of the nutrition teacher's job and DACUM chart with 5 duties, 28 tasks, and 107 task elements were derived by the DACUM method. The definition of a nutrition teacher was 'A teacher who is responsible for food service management and nutrition education and counseling for health promotion and disease prevention for students in primary and secondary schools'. The validation results of the tree structure were the priorities of the 28 tasks with ranks 1 and 2. Because there was no third priority, it was considered to be a good representation of the tasks of nutrition teachers. The DACUM chart was found to be evenly distributed with relative importances of more than 17 or less than 11 through the criticality analysis. Since the C5-4 (Conduct simulation exercise against food poisoning)'s content validity index was significantly less than the reference value of 0.78, it was not included in the final job description. 5 duties, 28 tasks, 102 task elements were included in the final job description of a nutrition teacher.