A Study to Develop and Evaluate a Need-based Curriculum on Nutrition for Students of Madrasahs in a Rural Block of Hooghly District, West Bengal

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Children are the hope and future for a nation.But, a large section of children is effected from malnutritionis also due to lack of knowledge and practices regarding theirfood requirements. So this study was conducted to designa training module to conduct more focused and need-basededucational interventions.Material and Methods: The present study was anintervention pre-post study on healthy life style among 187Madrasahs students of class VII and VIII where interventiongiven to the study Madrasah with the help of need basedcurriculum through trained teachers where teachers weretrained beforehand by the researcher himself.Results: The mean pretest knowledge score in study Madrasahwas 8.79 ± 4.15 and post test score was 24.19 ± 3.19.Thecalculated t-value was 33.34 and P value was less than 0.05with effect size 4.160 (Cohen’s D). In control Madrasah themean pretest knowledge score was 9.11± 4.45 and post testscore was 10.78 ± 4.32. The calculated t-value was 1.82 and Pvalue was 0.07 with effect size 0.061 (Cohen’s D).Conclusion: This study was conducted to develop andevaluate a need-based training curriculum for madrasahstudents of rural West Bengal on nutritional knowledge andpractices. This training curriculum was implemented bytrained teachers who were. The finding of the study mayprovide adequate evidence to conduct more focused and needbased educational interventions to equip school students withage appropriate knowledge and practices.