Nutrition is an issue of paramount importance in education as it plays a role in the development of the human body and its overall health. However, it has been found that adolescents have fragmented and/or poor knowledge of this topic, leading to detrimental health consequences. An example can be found in the Greek environment, where it is argued that lack of knowledge about nutrition has resulted in health issues, including increased rates of childhood obesity. Since Greek science curricula rarely include nutrition concepts and adolescents seek information mainly on the internet or from their parents, we decided to design an educational game about nutrition to provide a choice of complementary educational material. After exploring students’ existing knowledge, we created an educational card game involving all the nutritional groups, based on references to familiar and everyday foods, and which provided a choice of complementary educational material. Fifty K-10 students played the game for three instructional hours. Both before and after the game performance, students designed daily menu posters; comparison showed that while the evidence is encouraging and the game has had a positive impact, there are still improvements needed so that the game can ultimately contribute to students’ learning and attitudes about nutrition and thus their ability to make wise decisions about foods.

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Learning About Nutrition Through Play

  • Martha Georgiou

摘要

Nutrition is an issue of paramount importance in education as it plays a role in the development of the human body and its overall health. However, it has been found that adolescents have fragmented and/or poor knowledge of this topic, leading to detrimental health consequences. An example can be found in the Greek environment, where it is argued that lack of knowledge about nutrition has resulted in health issues, including increased rates of childhood obesity. Since Greek science curricula rarely include nutrition concepts and adolescents seek information mainly on the internet or from their parents, we decided to design an educational game about nutrition to provide a choice of complementary educational material. After exploring students’ existing knowledge, we created an educational card game involving all the nutritional groups, based on references to familiar and everyday foods, and which provided a choice of complementary educational material. Fifty K-10 students played the game for three instructional hours. Both before and after the game performance, students designed daily menu posters; comparison showed that while the evidence is encouraging and the game has had a positive impact, there are still improvements needed so that the game can ultimately contribute to students’ learning and attitudes about nutrition and thus their ability to make wise decisions about foods.