Health and food in schoolenvironment

Päivi Palojoki, docentDepartment of Home Economics and Craft Science

Nordplus-intensive course, Uppsala, April 2008

PsychologyFood as a tool to punish or praise oneselfFood as symbols: visible or hiddenFood and psychological securityMyths, taboos and superstitionsE.g., chocolade:

- as present and gift- as reward- as comfort and consolation- as taboo, etc

ReligionFood as God’s giftFood can not be thrown awayRituals and sacrifices

Food and genderDivision of labour: who prepares the food ’Sisyfos and exhibitionist’Male/Female food items: ’vegetables and bad conscious’

Food and social relationsPrestige and statusFriendship, communication and sharing

Food and health (well-being)Conceptions vs activities?

How do the youngsters get socialized into these cultural codes?How these aspects show in the school environment?

No simple matter of food choice

Big,Bigger,The biggest

What’s next?

Whose body image you are trying to internalize?

Anorexia athletica

Sven Hannawald (1,83 m/54 kg)

Nordic research project:

Children and Youngsters as FoodConsumers, Conceptions ofHealthy Food Habits AmongTeenagers in North Europe

The research group

Sweden:prof. Christina Fjellström, Uppsala Universitet

Denmark:ass.prof Jette Benn, Danish School of Education,University of Aarhus

Norway:FM Annbjörg Lindbaek, Akershus College, Oslo

Finlandadj.prof. Päivi Palojoki, KTM Eila Kauppinen, KK HeidiNiemi

Dilemma: irrational consumer vscontrolled citizen

How it islearned?

Learning to learn

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Household perspective

What islearned?

Action competence

EVERYDAY LIFE

Individuals as active agentsconstructing their activities and lifeworlds

Situatedindividuals

”Competencies”

Challenges for home ec education andhome ec teacher education

Knowledge,skills, emotionsINTERTWINED

Empowermentagency, criticalthinking

Open learningenvironments(Neo-Freire)

Shared responsibilitySocial theory of learning (Wenger)

Teacher’s role: from expert to facilitator (McGregor)

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Contextualizedview of activities

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Pressures on subject/content: relevancy regarding contemporary activities/TRANSFER

FACILITATORS OF EMPOWERMENT

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BARRIERS OF EMPOWERMENT

Data collection, a plan

Each responsible researcher is contacting her own network of home

economics teachers, through these school-contacts access to 9th graders

Contact first the home economics teacher, who contacts the headmaster

to get allowance to data-collection

As a bonus for the teacher, an attached a study activities package to be

used during the lessons: contributing to the themes in the questionnaire (to

increase teachers' motivation to help in data-collection)

Data collection: from February to early April 2006 (not to load schools too

late in the spring term)

Answering:

- on a given homepage (Finnish home-page), with a key-word given by

the teacher

- during home economics lessons or at home

QuestBack: Internet-based data collection, www.questback.com

Designing the questionnaire:

Designed 2005, ready to be tested in January 2006Designing first in Swedish, then translations to Norwegian, Danish andFinnishQuestions: the same basic core for all + national adaptations possibleBoth open and structured questionsPilots done:

Danish pilot study N=28 (Benn, 2005)

Swedish pilot studies: with QuestBack N=67 and a

handed out questionnaire N=54 (Fjellström 2005)

Respondents:9th graders

preliminary plan: to get approx 250 per each country, 1000 alltogether

anonymity is 100%

ethical rules are strictly followed

The questionnaire (1-18 open or structuredsets of questions)

Background variables1. Sex (SF: girl 52 % , boys 48 %)

2. Age (SF: 15 years of age: 49 %, 16 y: 44 % , 14 y or 17 y: 7 %)

3. Type of family: (SF: both parents 70 %, one (30 %)

Eating at school (4, 9)Food habits and food preparation (5, 6, 14)Evaluating food habits: home, school, society (7, 8, 10, 11)Eating and having meals at home (12)Food choice (13)Conceptions on food (15, 18)Learning food-related issues (16)Feedback of the questionnaire (17)

The data- Distribution of respondents

Finland: 2.4.06-25.1.2007 N=586Denmark: 2.4.06-18.12.2007 N=296Norway: 2.4.06-18.12.2007 N=246Sweden: 2.4.06-1.1.2008 N=427

______N= 1555

- Finland: first contact with 44 schools -> 11 volunteered:Suolahti, Ruukki, Oulainen, Espoo, Vantaa (3), Helsinki (4)- Two Master’s thesis in process as based on the quantitative

data, both add individual qualitative parts:a) Kauppinen: 2 focus-group interviews + 6 individual interviews

NGOs as nutrition educatorsb) Niemi: approx 10 individual interviews

9th graders conceptions on healthy food

Analysis

Qualitative data:- qualitative content analysis

Quantitative data:- mean, std deviations (description)- cross-tabulations (The Khi square test)- paired and unpaired t-tests (testing the statisticalsignificance of means)- designing summed variables (Pearson’s correlation test,one-way analysis of variance)

Some preliminary results

FinlandX SD

The respondent him/herself 4,64 1,498The family 4,10 1,412

Mother 4,19 1,473

Father 3,49 1,558

School 3,35 1,423

Friends 3,07 1,400

Teacher 2,12 1,359

Boy-/girlfriend 3,17 1,638

Health workers at school 3,07 1,538State authorities 2,32 1,433

Food industry 3,10 1,498

Advertisements 2,92 1,541

Table 13. Different peoples' influence on respondents‘food choices (scale from 1: very small influence to 6: very big influence).

Means and standard deviations.

The role of the school and the teacher

School is important (scale 1-6, 5+6)Girls: 27%

Boys: 16% (p= .001, t-test)

School is NOT important (scale 1-6, 1+2)Girls: 18%

Boys: 30% (p= .001, t-test)

Food and the familyPercentages of respondents who have answered ’very much’

(scale1-6, 5+6 combined)

62675771Eating breakfast at home

30262041Using a lot of time for food preparation

19212522Talking a lot about food with the family

21262124Making food WITH the family

41474152Using a lot of money in food in the family

77665275Eating together with the family

DK%

NO%

SF%

SVE%

Item

Different conceptions on foods (scale from 1:not at all true to 6: very true)Means and standard deviations.

FinlandConception X SDEcological food is good for your health 4,11 1,484

Industrial food is as healthy as home-made 2,38 1,254To prepare healthy food takes a lot of time 2,95 1,420To be able to eat healthy, one has to know how toprepare food

3,14 1,530

It is healthy to eat regularly 4,95 1,435

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day 4,39 1,632Warm meals are more healthy than cold ones 4,14 1,588

Note: Breakfast is the second highest here, compare with the previous table!

Identity shopping or doing asthe teachers teach?

On a way to critical consumer education

Factual informationand daily choices-A hugemismatch?

1. Vidste du, at......(Danske slakteriet: www.15opskrifter.dk)

Der er flere kilojoule i en Big MacTM 2080 kJ end i en portion kotelet uden fedtkant

med varm pastasalat 1900 kJ som vist på tallerkenen.

Big Mac TM 2080 kJ

Kotelet uden fedtkant og varm

pastasalat 1900 kJ

2. Vidste du, at......(Danske slakteriet www.15opskrifter.dk)

Der er flere kilojoule i en 69 g Lion® bar 1420 kJ + en ½ l CocaCola® 935 kJ end i en kotelet med fedtkant og varm pastasalat

2200 kJ, som vist på tallerkenen.

Lion® bar, 69 g en ½ l CocaCola® 2355 kJ

Kotelet med fedtkant og varmpastasalat 2200 kJ

COMMUNITY

How it is consumed?

Who is consuming?

ACTIVITIES IMAGES

INDIVIDUAL

Pedagogical direction

Postmodern direction

The controversial directions of consumereducation at schools

Ahava A-M & Palojoki, P. 2004. Adolescent consumers: reaching them, border crossings and

pedagogical challenges. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 28, 4, 371-378.

Selected readings

Ahava A-M & Palojoki, P. 2004. Adolescent consumers: reaching them, border crossings andpedagogical challenges. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 28, 4, 371-378.

Beck, U. (1992): Risk Society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage

Benn, J. (2004): Consumer Education between ‘consumership’ and citizenship: experiences from studiesof young people. International Journal of Consumer Studies; 28 (2): 108-117

Campbell, C. 1995. The sociology of consumption. In: D. Miller (Ed.) Acknowledging Consumption : AReview of New Studies. London: Routledge. 96–126.

Elliott, R. (1997): Existential consumption and irrational desire. In: European Journal of Marketing;31:285-296

Gardner, H. 1991. The unschooled mind: how children think and how schools should teach. New York:Basic books.

Hearn, J. & Roseneil, S. (1999). Consuming cultures - power and resistance. Explorations in sociology55. British sociological association. London: Macmillan press LTD.

Miles, S. 1998. Consumerism as a Way of Life. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Phelan, P., Locke Davidson, A. & Cao Yu, H. 1993. Student’s Multiple Worlds: Navigating the Borders ofFamily, Peer, and School Cultures. In: Phelan, P. and Locke Davidson, A.(Eds): Renegotiating culturaldiversity in American schools. 52–88.

Sandlin, J.A. 2005. Culture, consumption, and adult education: refashioning consumer education foradults as a political site using a cultural studies framework. Adult Education Quaterly, 55, 3, 165-181