A educação alimentar e nutricional na formação inicial de professores pedagogos no Estado do Ceará

Abstract

Discussion about Food and Nutrition Education (FNE) is necessary in different social sectors, due to the inadequate eating habits of Brazilian people. In school education, previous studies of the National Common Curricular Base – BNCC - for Elementary Education have shown that this theme was highlighted in the 5th grade, in the discipline of Sciences, when pedagogues teach scientific contents. Thus, the following guiding question emerges from this research: how are pedagogues, future teachers of science content for the initial grades, being prepared to work with Food and Nutrition Education? The questioning covers the speeches of official documents for the initial years; the curricular organization of courses in Ceará State in relation to the promotion of FNE; the formative experiences and the difficulties of pedagogical teachers in working with FNE. Thus, the general objective of this work was to analyze the preparation for the teaching of healthy eating in the Pedagogy courses of public higher education institutions at Ceará State; investigating from the organization of the curricular matrix to the preparatory course of the Pedagogy teachers, with the purpose of promoting FNE in the early years of elementary school. The specific objectives were: i) to investigate the speeches of the National Curriculum Parameters (NCP) and the BNCC for FNE in elementary education, which should guide the organization of content in the curriculum of Pedagogy courses; ii) to analyze the curricular matrices of Pedagogy courses at public universities at Ceará State to identify explicit approaches to FNE, articulating them to the National Curriculum Guidelines postulates; iii) to identify the preparation of Pedagogy educating teachers, their successful training experiences and the difficulties in acting with the FNE theme; iv) to investigate the relationship between training in Pedagogy courses and official education documents for the promotion of healthy eating. Regarding to the methodology, the official documents were analyzed in search of the content of the theme emphasized for the early years - the NCP (1997) and the BNCC (2017). After, the curricular matrices of the Pedagogy courses of a Higher Education Institution (HEI), which have 7 campuses distributed in the capital and other cities in State of Ceará, looking for FNE or related disciplines were analyzed. Subsequently, a questionnaire was applied to the teacher teachers, in some cases supplemented by an interview, exploring their preparations, successful experiences and difficulties with the highlighted topic. As a method of data interpretation, Textual Discursive Analysis (DTA) was used. Regarding the official documents, while the NCPs deal mostly with the nutritional aspects of food, the BNCC proposes them in Science education in a full form. Thus, the curricular proposals of HEI presented weaknesses, intensified by the lack of specific subjects of the FNE and containing only curricular components, such as Science Education and Health. Finally, of 7 teachers consulted, most did not have initial and / or continuing training within the scope of the FNE. Successful experiences are mostly with issues about nutrients in food, instructed by a single didactic strategy or by different teaching methodologies. The difficulties, unanimously, referred to the lack of academic training to promote healthy eating. There was a predominance of nutritional bias in the FNE discipline, ranging from government decisions to education, resulting in limited teaching practices. Furthermore, the lack of training on the FNE permeated the trajectory of preparation and performance of these respondents, who tried to maintain a harmony of the nutritional aspects, recommended in the NCP and the BNCC.