Parents’ and young adults’ perceptions of secondary school food education in Australia

Abstract

Purpose Secondary school food education provides students with opportunities to build lifelong healthy dietary practices. A number of stakeholder groups are important for the success of this form of education. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to examine young adults’ and parents’ opinions of secondary school food education. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was administered to 1,086 respondents drawn from a commercial research panel. Findings In total, 50-60 per cent of all respondents agreed that food education should be compulsory for years seven to ten and 31-32 per cent of respondents agreed that it should be compulsory for years 11 and 12. Almost 69 per cent suggested one to three hours per week for food education. More than 75 per cent of respondents agreed that there should be a non-compulsory food and nutrition subject for year 11 and 12 students and believed that this subject would help students to develop their food-related knowledge and skills. Practical implications There is a gap between parents’ and young adults’ views of school food education and what is actually practiced in Australian secondary schools. Obtaining their opinions in future food-related education and policy reforms could help design and deliver food education to better meet the expectations of its recipients: students and their families. Originality/value The examination of large number of young adults’ and parents’ opinions of school food education makes this study unique.

Senior Secondary School Food Literacy Education: Importance, Challenges, and Ways of Improving

“…Building on this, middle (years 9 and 10) and upper secondary grades (years 11 and 12) might be provided with more applied and critical food literacy knowledge and skills [ 3 , 9 ] such as food ethics, food regulation, and social equity in food distribution. Consistent with the previous published findings of the authors [ 42 , 49 ] and a recent Australian study that explored teachers’ opinions of school food literacy education [ 29 ], the respondents indicated that making the food literacy subjects compulsory would help to raise the status and recognition of these subjects in schools.…”

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“…Findings from the present study suggest the majority of young males are in favor of mandatory food skills education. Similar views have been reported among young adults (Nanayakkara et al, 2018;Worsley, 2006), and by the public at large (Pendergast et al, 2011;Wolfson et al, 2017). Although the majority (n 5 37) of the participants in this study supported mandatory education, only a third (n 5 16) deemed schools responsible for teaching food skills.…”

“…Food skills education in schools remains a predominantly female subject (Nanayakkara et al, 2018), a viewpoint shared by participants in the present study. In one Canadian province, the female to male ratio for home economics food and nutrition courses across grades 7 to 12 averaged 1.32 (Slater, 2013).…”

Beyond the authenticity–standardisation paradox in international gastronomy retailing: Twisting the hosting city brand with the place of origin

“…The specificity of this software is analysis of "the meanings within passages of text by extracting the main concepts and ideas" instead of applying word frequencies (Tseng et al, 2015, p. 350). The unsupervised seeding option was set (Nanayakkara et al, 2018), validated by previous studies (Smith and Humphreys, 2006), and the software automatically scanned textual data producing descriptors and associating them to build themes. Leximancer labelled the emerging themes in light of the most cooccurring descriptors.…”

“…, 2015, p. 350). The unsupervised seeding option was set (Nanayakkara et al. , 2018), validated by previous studies (Smith and Humphreys, 2006), and the software automatically scanned textual data producing descriptors and associating them to build themes.…”