Developing sustainability competencies through healthy and sustainable nutrition workshops in initial teacher training

Abstract

Education is key in promoting sustainable development across various sectors, including nutrition. Teachers play a critical role in shaping the mindset and skills of future generations, enabling them to effectively address global challenges. By integrating sustainability into their initial training, future teachers will have a greater understanding of the complexity of issues such as food security, environmental conservation, and social equity. It will also enable them to design teaching proposals that are in line with this complexity for their professional future. The objectives of this study are to show a curricular proposal that integrates healthy and sustainable nutrition contents into a degree in early childhood education and to assess university students’ competencies in sustainability issues. This is a pre-experimental quantitative study with a sample of second-year students enrolled in a subject called “Childhood, Health, and Nutrition” that lasted for one semester in three consecutive academic years. The results showed the effective integration of the project-oriented learning strategy as a teaching–learning methodology for the design of healthy and sustainable nutrition workshops for children aged 4–5. The workshops were presented in a simulated school context at the SDG Student Congress held at the university, and the sustainability competencies of these future early childhood teachers were assessed by a multidisciplinary team of experts using a specific rubric. The data obtained revealed a medium–high level of competency development in all three academic years analysed. This is a preliminary study that offers an example of how to integrate sustainability in a holistic manner linked to healthy nutrition contents aimed at training future teachers.