Effectiveness of the ‘Food Safety and Health’ Workbook for High-school Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was implementing the high-school ‘Food Safety and Health’ curriculum using the workbook, and to evaluate the educational impact on, and satisfaction of student who participated in class. A total of 109 lessons were undertaken in home economics classes by referring to the ‘Food Safety and Health’ workbook for 1,154 students attending seven high schools located in seven cities and provinces across the Korea. In order to examine the effects of classes by referring to workbooks, pre- and post-evaluations were conducted by devising a questionnaire about dietary behavior associated with food safety, creative problemsolving abilities, community capacities, and social cooperation capacities. The results of the analysis of the collected data from 674 students who participated in the pre- and post-evaluations are as follows. First, according to the results of the paired t-test conducted to examine the effects of using the workbook in classes on dietary behavior, significant positive changes were observed in the dietary behavior related to food safety, creative problem-solving skills, community consciousness, and social cooperation capabilities. Second, as a result of the students’ evaluation of classes by referring to the ‘Food Safety and Health’ workbook, both satisfaction and interest in the class using the workbook were high, and the difficulty level was deemed to be appropriate. Additionally, it was found that the students actively participated in learning activities. The reason for this appears to be that the aforementioned workbook consisted of various student activities such as experiments, practical exercises, and group activities aimed at strengthening the link between life and education, thus enabling increased student participation.