As práticas curriculares sobre a Educação Alimentar e Nutricional no âmbito do Curso Técnico em Meio Ambiente Integrado ao Ensino Médio

Abstract

The adoption of educational strategies related to Food and Nutrition Education (FNE) for adolescents constitutes an important tool for the development of healthy eating habits. Integrated High School (IHS) aims to promote holistic human education, and, to this end, schools play a fundamental role in learning, in the maintenance of healthy habits, in the development of critical thinking, and in strengthening autonomy and local culture. The objective of this professional master’s research was to understand how curricular practices concerning Food and Nutrition Education are characterized with a view to the holistic human formation of students enrolled in the Environmental Technician Program integrated with High School at the Federal Institute of Pernambuco (IFPE), Garanhuns Campus. The specific objectives were as follows: to analyze the discourses on Food and Nutrition Education presented in the Pedagogical Course Project (PCP) of the Integrated Environmental Technician Program; to analyze curricular practices related to Food and Nutrition Education based on the discourses of the teaching staff; and to develop an educational product in the form of a self-instructional minicourse intended for Integrated High School teachers. This qualitative research, descriptive and exploratory in nature, is linked to the macroproject Educational Practices in the Integrated Curriculum, within the research line Educational Practices in Professional and Technological Education. The study was conducted at IFPE, Garanhuns Campus. Data collection involved documentary research-which included analysis of the Pedagogical Course Project-as well as the administration of a mixed questionnaire containing open and closed questions to 11 general education teachers and 8 technical teachers from the program. The analysis of the documentary corpus was carried out using the Discursive Textual Analysis (DTA) method; closed-ended questions were examined through descriptive statistics, and open-ended responses were analyzed using Bardin’s (2016) thematic categorical content analysis technique. The results revealed that FNE is not explicitly incorporated into the course curriculum. Consequently, some discourses related to FNE were identified in only 32.56% of the general education subjects, among which the category “FNE and holistic education” stood out, representing 71.43% of them. In the technical subjects, 93.33% presented discourses concerning FNE, particularly within the category “FNE and sustainability.” For 57.89% of the teachers, FNE is neither included in the curriculum nor connected to their subjects, and therefore is not addressed in their curricular practices. Finally, an educational product (EP) was developed in the form of a self-instructional minicourse entitled “Food and Nutrition Education and Teaching Practice in Integrated High School”, intended for IHS teachers at IFPE, Garanhuns Campus. The EP was administered to seven teachers and evaluated by them. The assessment was conducted using a questionnaire comprising six analytical dimensions (aesthetics/organization, modules, writing, content, didactic proposals, and criticality of the EP). The product was deemed satisfactory by all participants and subsequently revised based on their suggestions. Thus, the development of this research fostered greater awareness of the importance of FNE in the curricular practices of IHS, and the educational product, in addition to serving as a methodology for teachers’ continuing education, encouraged reflection on integrative and interdisciplinary curricular practices aimed at promoting healthy and sustainable eating habits