Food, nutrient, and energy waste among school students

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (8) ◽  
pp. 1807-1831 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Teresa Kowalewska ◽  
Anna Kołłajtis-Dołowy
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Middle School Students ◽  
Young People ◽  
Educational Intervention ◽  
Food Waste ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Household Waste ◽  
School Students ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Before And After

Purpose According to a study by European Commission, 88m tons of food waste are generated per year, of which 46.5m tons are wasted by households. Households still remain the main source of food waste (53 percent). The purpose of this paper is to estimate households’ food waste and wastage-related losses of energy and nutrients among middle school students as well as assess educational intervention regarding food waste prevention. Design/methodology/approach The study included 555 students from 11 schools in Poland. The study was conducted using the survey questionnaire and the three-day record of food waste. The interventional group filled a questionnaire before and after of education as well as after three months of intervention. Findings Students waste 23 g of food per day. The most wasted products are: potatoes, bread, fruits and vegetable as well as meet and ham. Energy losses from leftovers are less than 1–10 percent. Losses of nutritional value along with wastages were the highest for vitamin C, but also for dietary fiber, potassium and folate. Food waste education was nearly twice as strong in study group with films intervention, than those who received only a leaflet for parents. Research limitations/implications Middle school students are responsible for households’ food waste and contribute to energy and nutrition losses. Educational intervention is more effective, while using multimedia methods and need to be continued. Practical implications The paper is a scientific study and addressed to the scientific audience. However, due to the problem of households’ food waste, general public could be also interested. Social implications Food waste is an element of waste management. Studying the scale of food waste and waste related behavior can help to better understand causes of food waste. The search for ways to limit food waste, through education address to young people, can be an effective method of prevention of waste. The UN has established 17 new development goals for the years 2015–2030 (United Nations, 2015). One of them (Goal 12) is focused on ensuring sustainable consumption and production. It means halving food waste at the retail and consumer levels and food losses at the production and post-harvest stages by 2030. Originality/value There are few publications available about food waste including energy and nutrients waste. This study shows the scale of household waste, the quantity and type of wasted products and causes of disposal. Also, the way of handling with food waste at homes was examined. It is also important to draw attention to the responsibility of young people in wasting food, which was examined in the paper.

Comparing Middle School Students’ Responses to Narrative Versus Expository Texts on Situational and Individual Interest

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Durik ◽  
◽  
Steven McGee ◽  
Edward Hansen ◽  
Jennifer Duck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Middle School Students ◽  
Situational Interest ◽  
Expository Texts ◽  
Individual Interest ◽  
School Students ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Web Based Learning ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Text Genre

This project examined the effects of text genre on both situational and individual interest. Middle school students completed a three-session web-based learning module in the domain of ecology wherein they were randomly assigned to either narrative or expository readings that were matched on key idea units and other variables. Students reported individual interest in ecology on the day before and after their exposure to the module. Affective and cognitive situational interest was measured after the readings on each day of the module. The results showed that expository readings were perceived as more helpful for learning than were narrative readings, but this varied somewhat by initial individual interest. Although the narrative versions did not facilitate situational interest, there was a small effect on individual interest suggesting that learners exposed to narrative readings came to perceive the domain of ecology as a more meaningful discipline than did those exposed to expository readings.

scholarly journals Exploration of Middle School Students’ Ideas of Fine Dust Issues Using Issue Concept Maps

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Gahyoung Kim ◽  
Kongju Mun ◽  
Hyunju Lee
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Middle School Students ◽  
Concept Maps ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Seventh Graders ◽  
Fine Dust ◽  
Instructional Tool ◽  
School Students ◽  
Before And After

Abstract This study introduces issue concept maps (IC map) as an instructional tool for exploring students’ idea about socio-scientific issues (SSI). By visualizing students’ ideas in two dimensions, context and occurrence, IC maps represent what kinds of ideas students have on the issues, and how their ideas change and connect. In the study, we implemented a SSI program on fine dust for 77 seventh graders and used IC maps to investigate how their ideas changed after the program. Students collaboratively constructed IC maps in groups before and after the program. Results show that the number of ideas written on IC maps significantly increased after the program from 92 to 254 ideas, indicating that the program contributed to enhancing students’ awareness about the issues in terms of its causes, effects, and countermeasures at various context levels. Students also presented a greater variety of types of connections among their ideas after the program.

scholarly journals Exploring Three Measures of Student Wellbeing

2015 ◽  
pp. 296-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Skrzypiec ◽  
Helen Askell-Williams ◽  
Phillip Slee
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Middle School ◽  
Middle School Students ◽  
Young People ◽  
Small Proportion ◽  
Subjective Wellbeing ◽  
Young Adolescents ◽  
School Students ◽  
Subjective Judgments ◽  
Purposive Sample

There has been limited consensus on how young people's wellbeing should be measured (O'Hare & Gutierrez, 2012). One approach, suggested by Lau and Bradshaw (2010), is that people's subjective judgments capture the essence of wellbeing. Following from Lau and Bradshaw's approach, in this chapter the authors report on a study that sought young adolescents' subjective judgments using three different wellbeing instruments. A purposive sample of 1930 South Australian middle-school students aged 11-16 completed three different measures of wellbeing. Analysis of these instruments indicated that they all require some modification to make them better suited as measures of the subjective wellbeing of young people in the middle-school years. Using the three scales together, the study indicated that the majority (55%) of students were flourishing, a large proportion (39%) had moderate mental health, and a small proportion (about 6%) were languishing.

scholarly journals Impact of Informal Experiences: Changes in Mathematics Motivation for Middle Schoolers

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Suzanne F Lindt ◽  
Dittika Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Middle School Students ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Learning Goals ◽  
School Students ◽  
Middle Schoolers ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Efficacy Measure ◽  
Vicarious Experiences ◽  
The Impact

The current research sought to examine the impact of a week-long mathematics camp on motivation and self-efficacy beliefs of participating middle school students. Middle school students participated in a one-week mathematics camp on a college campus, where they worked on authentic mathematics activities that were applied to real world concepts. The activities were developed by a mathematics educator and were facilitated by trained college students. Middle school students responded to the Sources of Self-Efficacy measure before and after the mathematics camp to determine whether changes occurred in various motivational variables resulting from their participation in the camp. Parallel t-tests indicated significant positive changes in students’ vicarious experiences and mastery goals to suggest that participation in the camp may have caused students to feel more confident in their ability to work through math problems and to adopt learning goals for mastering mathematics content. Providing middle school students with informal learning experiences in mathematics may help them in creating long-term goals for their learning.

“Welcome to The Shop”

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-410
Author(s):  
H. Bernard Hall
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Middle School Students ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
After School ◽  
White Female ◽  
School Students ◽  
Content Type ◽  
And Behaviors

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the ways in which hip-hop pedagogies and literacies encouraged middle school students to explore performance poetry as a tool to “(w)right” the truth(s) about learning and living in their local and global communities. Design/methodology/approach Collaborative self-study research methodologies were used by the author, a black male teacher educator and hip-hop cultural insider, along with two white, female reading specialists and hip-hop cultural outsiders, to collect and analyze the practices and behaviors used in The Shop – an after-school hip-hop-based spoken word poetry club for middle school students in a small, urban public school district in Northeastern USA. Findings Three primary findings emerge: teachers with limited cultural and content knowledge of hip-hop may struggle to negotiate real and perceived curricular constraints associated with using pedagogies with hip-hop texts and aesthetics in traditional school contexts, the intersections of teachers’ racial, cultural and gender identities informed the respective practices and behaviors in a number of interesting ways, and using hip-hop pedagogies for social justice in public schools requires a delicate balance of both transparency and discretion on the part of teachers. Originality/value Study findings are salient for in- and pre-service English teachers and English educators, as they offer insights and reflections on the instructional and relational challenges cultural outsiders may face when using hip-hop culture to create spaces and opportunities for young people to talk back and speak truth to power.

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