Card Game-based Learning on Nutrition Value and Labeling

Abstract

In a consumer society, educating children for a healthy lifestyle is challenging for the teacher. Daily, children are exposed to large amounts of information (including misinformation) and the field of healthy eating is no exception. The teacher must, therefore, develop good teaching strategies that include informative/innovative teaching tools. The aim of the study was to determine whether the learning results of pupils after the introduction of a didactic game with nutrition cards were better than the learning results of pupils who acquired knowledge through a traditional (teacher-lead) presentation. This pedagogical experiment was conducted with 56 Slovenian Grade 6 pupils aged 11–12 (28 students in the experimental group [EG] and 28 in the control group [CG]). The results showed that the EG students (students learning with nutritional cards) achieved a better result in the knowledge test compared to CG students. Most pupils taught with nutrition cards expressed a positive opinion about this type of learning. They also stated that they would pay more attention to nutrition labeling in future purchases. The results suggest that using nutritional cards in teaching can have a positive effect on the learning process and the learning outcome.

Keywords

• didactic game
• food labeling
• nutrition cards
• traffic light
• visualization