Food and Agriculture Education Teacher Training: Professional and Effective Lesson Plans from Hoe to Chopsticks
Text/ TNEa Taiwan Health and Nutrition Education Promotion Association
In recent years in Taiwan, fueled by an endless stream of food safety issues, the topic of food and agriculture education has begun to emerge in various places. However, how to integrate the concerns of both the hoe, representing agricultural producers, and the chopsticks, representing consumers, into a single lesson plan is truly a major challenge for food and agriculture education. The even more critical question is: how do we know whether these food and agriculture education lesson plans have been effective, and whether they have truly changed people's dietary behaviors regarding what they eat and what they buy?
If we analyze most of today's food and agriculture education examples, it is not difficult to find that the emphasis is still more on "agriculture education" than on "food education." That is, most use methods such as visiting local farms, hands-on experience of farming and fishing, and then getting to know local ingredients and cooking and eating together as course content, hoping thereby to cultivate participants' attitudes and abilities to respect the land and nature.
In reality, however, there are too many factors influencing people's food choices. Merely improving knowledge and experiences cannot effectively change people's dietary behaviors. Obesity and the "three highs" (high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high blood lipids) caused by busy lives, irregular meals, and nutritional imbalance, along with other long-term accumulated metabolic problems, all result from people settling for what is tasty, convenient, and cheap. Therefore, how food and agriculture education should progress from the learning goal of "cherishing food" to the implementation of behavioral change through "balanced eating" is what would truly meet the most urgent needs of today's consuming public as a transformative lesson plan.
Food and Agriculture Nutrition Education Teacher Training Program Enrollment
"Agriculture education" inspires the public to care about food and to experience the passion of good eating, while "food education" further promotes behavioral change in people's self-management of diet and health. In the book "Nutrition Education" by international nutrition education expert Prof. Isobel Contento of Columbia University in New York, statistics from 303 research papers over the past 70 years indicate that transformative lesson plan designs aimed at behavioral change can not only enhance the public's knowledge of balanced eating, but also change the public's awareness and attitudes toward food choices, thereby effectively promoting the public's dietary behaviors.
Echoing the launch of the Year of Food Education, TNEa Taiwan Health and Nutrition Education Promotion Association and the NTU Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Center will co-host the "Food and Agriculture Nutrition Education Teacher Training Program" in the spring of 2017, teaching the lesson plan design of international nutrition education expert Prof. Isobel Contento of Columbia University in New York. Teachers dedicated to food and agriculture education are warmly invited to learn together how to apply behavior change theory and various factors from psychology to design transformative lesson plans that can be quantitatively evaluated, enabling food and agriculture education, dietary education, and nutrition education to more efficiently promote sustainable eating for Taiwanese people!
●Co-organizing unit: #National Taiwan University Biotechnology Research Center
●Class location: National Taiwan University Boya Hall
●Class dates: 3/4, 3/5, 3/11, 3/12, 3/18, 3/19
●Class time: 9:00~16:40
●Instructor introduction:
#Teacher Lin Ya-en
Chairperson of the Taiwan Health and Nutrition Education Promotion Association
Current positions: Lecturer at Fu Jen Catholic University, Lecturer at Shih Chien University, CEO of the Nutrition Center at Mango Social Enterprise
Dual master's degrees in Nutrition Education and Nutrition Medicine from the Institute of Behavioral Studies at Columbia University in New York, USA
Registered dietitian certified in both the USA and Taiwan
17 years of clinical, community, and school nutrition work experience, having served 8 community hospitals, 4 schools, and 2 internationally renowned nutrition research centers (Irving Institute for Clinical Research and New York Obesity Research Center at Mt. Sinai St. Luke's Hospital)
●Credit acquisition
1. Upon completion of the program, a certificate of completion or credit certificate will be issued by the National Taiwan University Biotechnology Research Center.
2. Upon completion of the program, the Taiwan Health and Nutrition Education Promotion Association will issue 36 hours of nutrition teacher certification credits for the training.
3. Upon completion of the program, participants with dietitian status may obtain continuing education credits for medical personnel.
●Target participants
1. Those currently mainly engaged in nutrition education, school nutrition, and related educational work
2. Those who intend to devote themselves in the future to work related to expanding nutrition education and food and agriculture education
●Course fee: TNEa association member discounted price 12000 yuan
※All six classes must be registered for at once; single-session registration will not be accepted.
●Enrollment capacity: 40 people, until full, so act quickly
●Enrollment period: from now until 2/24
●For detailed registration information and regulations, please refer to the registration brochure
Registration webpage: https://goo.gl/rL8571
Brochure download: https://goo.gl/BrmPKH
For all event details, please refer to the TNEa Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/236184753500014/