Effects of Interdisciplinery Nutrition Education on Prospective Science Teachers’ Development of Healthy Life Style Behaviours

Abstract

With the interdisciplinary approach which is developed as an alternative to the traditional disciplinary model in education, it is aimed that the students will have a holistic perspective while producing solutions to real life problems. In this study, the effects of nutrition education given with interdisciplinary approach on health development behaviors of prospective teachers were investigated. The research has an experimental research model, which is one of the quantitative research designs. The sample of the study is consisting of 60 prospective teachers studying in the science teaching department of a state university in Istanbul in the 2016-2017 education year. In this study, in addition to demographic information form that has been applied, the Healthy Life Style Behavior Scale II (HLSBS-II) was also applied to the experimental and control group students in order to determine healthy life style behaviors of students. SPSS 23 package program was used to perform statistical analysis of the gathered data. When the post-test data were analyzed, it was seen that there were significant differences between four sub-dimensions (physical activity, nutrition, inner development and stress management) and overall scores of the two groups (p<.05). When the research results are examined, it appears that interdisciplinary nutrition education has a positive effect on students' healthy life style behaviors. The information obtained in the research was discussed and recommendations were made accordingly.