Developing Long-term Healthy Eating Behaviours in Canadian Kindergarten Curricula
Keywords:
healthy eating curricula, kindergarten education, healthy eating, document analysisAbstract
This document analysis examines kindergarten curricula regarding healthy eating and/or nutrition from the 13 Canadian provincial and territorial governments, covering an area where knowledge is currently lacking. Curricula are analyzed using a framework composed of five concepts drawn from the healthy eating behaviour development literature and kindergarten pedagogical literature. Results indicate that the curricula of many Canadian educational jurisdictions do not teach lifelong healthy eating behaviours to children in ways that align with the literature. Many nutrition curricula developed for kindergarten classes across Canada challenge teachers respecting the fostering of children’s lifelong healthy eating behaviours. Consequently, present findings fill in current gaps in knowledge about kindergarten nutrition curricula across Canada, providing a needed foundation for future research. This article concludes with a call for the development of kindergarten curricula to better match current research knowledge regarding children’s long-term healthy eating behaviour development.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit PHENex (See The Effect of Open Access).