Investigation of Status of School Nutrition Education and Changes in Perception of Nutrition Teacher's Job

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the status of school nutrition education and changes in perception of nutrition teacher's job in order to determine the need for redesign to achieve their ideal job. The questionnaire was distributed to 1,550 nutrition teachers, and a total of 1,487 usable data were collected with a 96% response rate from August to December 2015. Statistical data analysis was completed by using SPSS/Win 21.0 for descriptive analysis. The results were as follows 45.5% of nutrition teachers periodically implemented nutrition education classes, and 32.7% of responses used creative activity times for nutrition and dietary life education. Various topics were taught such as strategies to improve dietary habits, choice of healthy foods and nutrition labeling, nutrition information, food safety, and environmental problems, etc. Current performance ratios of nutrition teacher's duties and tasks were as follows nutrition operation 31.3%, foodservice hygiene and safety 28.0%, nutrition management 22.7%, nutrition and dietary life education and counselling 11.6%, and professional development 6.4%. Opinions about ideal job performance of nutrition teachers were investigated to determine needs for job redesign. Two in nutrition management duty tasks and four foodservice management duties duty tasks were reduced. On the other hand, another two nutrition management duty tasks and three nutrition and dietary life education and counselling tasks were increased compared to current job performance.