Sustainable food education: what food preparation competences are needed to support vegetable consumption?

Abstract

Contributing to more sustainable diets is a major challenge for contemporary environmental education. It implies an increase in the share of plant-based foods and of home-cooked meals. Awareness of this is widespread but taking concrete action is not easy. What competences does it call for? To identify them, we proposed an 8-month training course to groups of young adults in France. Their consumption of vegetables and the competences they mobilized were collected at the end of the training and 8?months later. The competences used by the participants with the lowest consumption of vegetables included controlling their food budget, collecting information about processed foods and planning what they would like to eat. The competences used by the participants with the highest consumption included planning meal preparation, being flexible, choosing quality products and mastering the preparation of fresh vegetables. These results are of interest for designing education programmes for sustainable diets.     

Is students’ qualitative feedback changing,now it is online?

Student feedback can be used to enable institutions to achieve the best possible outcomes for students through informing changes which enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Following the introduction of an online survey platform to gather student feedback at a top-performing UK university, anecdotal concerns raised by academics suggested students were being more critical. This exploratory study investigated the effects of switching from a paper to an online survey by comparing the open-ended responses between the two methods of collection. The main contribution of this study is the development of an analytical framework which can be used by other institutions to evaluate student comments, in order to understand and improve the student experience. Three key findings in this study were uncovered. Firstly, the quality of student feedback is not undermined by a switch to a more efficient online collection. Secondly, student comments via both methods of collection predominantly continue to focus on fulfilling basic needs, such as study resources. Finally, a small number of comments online revealed a lack of behavioural constraint and were considered to be inappropriate. These findings have important policy implications for the global higher education sector, highlighting the need for students to be given guidance on providing constructive feedback.     

Production of elaborated argumentative discourse: The role of cooperativeness

The analysis of argumentative discourse produced by 68 students aged 10–17 reveals two facets: argumentative discourse involves both dialogal and argumentative operations. When the dialogue goal calls for the speakers to reach a compromise on a debate topic, they are prompted to negotiate the discourse object: negotiation on content of the exchanges (argumentative cooperativeness which presupposes an articulation of each partner’s arguments with the other partner’) and on the level of the formal argumentative markers of negotiation. The key finding is that dialogal and argumentative operations are functionally linked: the percentage of markers of utterance involvement, axiological forms and modalizations is much higher in argumentative cooperative discourse as compared to discourse where cooperativeness is only dialogal (in which the speakers merely regulate turn taking and maintain thematic continuity). Furthermore, the differentiation in frequency of use of negotiation markers as a function of type of cooperativeness increases with age. Argumentative dialogue thus emerges as a complex form of language behavior which brings interconnected language operations into play.     

Prenatal hormones and postnatal socialization by parents as determinants of male-typical toy play in girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia

Toy choices of 3- to 10-year-old children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and of their unaffected siblings were assessed. Also assessed was parental encouragement of sex-typed toy play. Girls with CAH displayed more male-typical toy choices than did their unaffected sisters, whereas boys with and without CAH did not differ. Mothers and fathers encouraged sex-typical toy play in children with and without CAH. However, girls with CAH received more positive feedback for play with girls' toys than did unaffected girls. Data show that increased male-typical toy play by girls with CAH cannot be explained by parental encouragement of male-typical toy play. Although parents encourage sex-appropriate behavior, their encouragement appears to be insufficient to override the interest of girls with CAH in cross-sexed toys.     

Development of a competency model and tailored assessment method for high school science teachers utilizing a flipped learning approach

Many professional development programs aim to improve student outcomes by enhancing teacher competencies. Effective evaluation of these programs requires a clear delineation of the competencies to be gained. A competency model was developed to evaluate the impact of a teacher professional program that aimed to improve teachers’ ability to effectively implement technologically engaged modules in a flipped classroom setting. Competencies were identified via participatory evaluation techniques and assessments were aligned to the competencies. The competency of teachers in the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for creation and delivery of effective flipped lessons can be tracked using a radar graph to guide tailored professional development.

     

Using digital and paper diaries for learning and assessment purposes in higher education: a comparative study of feasibility and reliability

The incorporation of diaries and journals as learning and assessment vehicles into programmes of study within higher education has enabled the further growth of reflection, creative writing, critical thinking and meta‐cognitive processes of students’ learning. However, there is currently little research that aims to compare how different types of diary are used and for what specific learning and teaching purposes, so, with this in mind, a study was carried out to investigate digital diary use within a group of undergraduates, to some of whom the authors allocated Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), which they used to contribute to a blog (digital diaries), and to some of whom hard‐backed format (paper diaries) were given. This paper is the first of two from this study. The findings indicated that whilst students found both forms of diary acceptable and convenient, differences emerged in the way that the diaries were being used on a day‐to‐day basis, both in the frequency of entry and in the length of entries made. Throughout the study, the digital diaries were used more frequently, although the entries were often brief and incomplete. Conversely, students completing the paper diaries made significantly fewer entries in total, but those that were made were longer and more discursive in nature. Further, it was found that the paper diaries possessed positive qualities related to handling and attractiveness that promoted more prolonged use, whilst the negative qualities of the digital diaries were linked to technical limitations. The implications of this work are considered in relation to more general notions of using dynamic devices to encourage students to engage in reflexive criticism.     

Can the English Baccalaureate act as an educational equaliser?

ABSTRACT

Ensuring equal access to a broad and balanced curriculum for all students is a key component of a socially just education system. Yet in England, the freedom that 16-year-old students have to choose the GCSE subjects they study has created divisions in the pathways taken by students from different backgrounds. In 2010, a new accountability measure, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), was introduced to encourage more disadvantaged students to study the ‘core academic’ GCSE subjects. This paper investigates the success of this initiative by analysing the relationship between free school meal (FSM) eligibility, studying the EBacc subjects and GCSE attainment. The findings are used to illustrate the complexities of balancing equal access to academic subjects against fair access to future opportunities, which often depend on good grades, when trying to deliver social justice in an education system that has an entrenched attainment gap.     

Non-linear instructional design model: eternal, synergistic design and development

Instructional design is at the heart of each educational endeavour. This process revolves around the steps through which the thoughtful productions of superior products are created. The ADDIE generic instructional design model emphasises five basic steps within the instructional design process: analyse, design, develop, implement and evaluate. The simplistic nature of the ADDIE model, including the ease of application and possibilities towards the cyclical features of the process, enable a more holistic overview of the instructional design process. The Eternal, Synergistic Design Model emphasises the non‐linear nature of the instructional design process. The continuous design and development focuses upon the core evaluation of the product, wherein the Pareto principle emphasises the feedback related to the 20% of difficulties while maintaining an eye upon the 80% neutral and positive aspects of the product.     

Here for You: Attachment and the Growth of Empathic Support for Friends in Adolescence

Attachment was examined as a predictor of teens’ empathic support for friends in a multimethod longitudinal study of 184 U.S. adolescents (58% Caucasian, 29% African American, 13% other) followed from ages 14 to 18. Adolescents’ secure state of mind regarding attachment at 14 predicted teens’ greater capacity to provide empathic support during observed interactions with friends across ages 16–18 (B_average = .39). Teens’ empathic support was generally stable during this period, and less secure teens were slower to develop these skills. Further, teens’ attachment security predicted the degree to which friends called for their support (B_average = .29), which was associated with teens’ responsiveness to such calls. The findings suggest that secure attachment predicts teens’ ability to provide empathic support in close friendships.