Abstract
This study is an analysis on how current elementary teachers think about nutrition education, how they are teaching it, and problems that have occurred. The main purpose of this analysis was to deal with future problems in nutrition education by analyzing the present situation . The survey was done on 544 currently working elementary school teachers. from the 9 education departments within Seoul, 2 schools were chosen from each department by stratified random sampling. The survey used a questionnaire that was passed out personally to teachers from September 1, 1997 to the 19th. The 544 usable questionnaires were analyzed by using the teachers had nutrition education training and the average score of nutrition knowledge was 13.30 $\pm$2.73 out of 20. Nutrition education was being taught as apart of other subjects in 87.9% of the schools, and mainly by lecture. Audio visuals aids were used by 53.7% of the teachers and the most common was the VTR. Nutrition education was taught as a part of physical education and 41.5% were using teacher guides to help them. 91.9% of the teachers supported the idea of nutrition education in elementary schools. Nutrition education was supported by 80. 0% of teachers to begin when children are in kindergarten, proving that early nutrition education is supported. The analysis showed that nutrition education should be taught by parents(29.4%) , teachers(29.2%), and nutritionists(25.9%) relating that family , education, and school lunch programs should tie in with each other. 96.7% of the teachers responded that they would teach nutrition education. However, 41.0% disagreed with having a separate course for nutrition education . Proper eating habits, nutrition and its diseases, and growth with nutrition were the main categories within nutrition education and the most effect method was thought to have audio visuals, guides for teachers , and to link the subject matter with school lunch programs. The teachers main responses to problems with children were that they are too much instant food, did not eat in a variety , and had no manners in eating. Ironically, the believed that malnutrition, fainting and growth stunt were not important nutrition problems.