New Perspectives in Science Education

The high relevance to everyday life as well as the high societal relevance of nutrition demand to make this topic suitable for teaching in accordance with the goal of education for sustainable development. This is not just about conveying scientific expertise but also about recognizing and questioning societal value systems. In the center of the present work stands the conception of a sustainable nutrition in the style of von Koerber, Männle and Leitzmann (2012), including the individual, environment, economy, society and culture as dimensions. Through practical action orientations, sustainable nutrition contributes simultaneously to the requirements for health, environmental, economic and social compatibility. Building on (a) the model of educational reconstruction following Kattmann et al. (1997) and (b) the approach of inquiry-based learning, teaching and learning materials on the drink smoothie have been developed to implement the topic of sustainable nutrition in and outside the classroom. In this sense, a smoothie is according to Moura et al. (2017, p. 216) a drink composed of a mixture of vegetables (e.g. fruits, vegetables), being a high creamy, healthy beverage. For the didactic structuring, Gralher’s (2015) guidelines for imparting an educated sustainable nutrition support the effectiveness of the educational materials. In four learning units (e.g. workshops), held in an Austrian youth center and a botanical garden as part of the H2020-EU-project “BigPicnic: engaging the public with Responsible Research and Innovation on Food Security”, teenagers (age 14-18) tested the education material. With the help of self-reliant and active discovery, the participants of the workshops tried to exemplify established hypotheses and conjecture. Due to the generous freedom of action, one’s own interests can be tapped. Our primarily results show that the developed teaching and learning materials on smoothies made the complex topic of sustainable nutrition more accessible to learners. Consequently, the presented teaching model offers suggestions on how the topic of sustainable nutrition can be inbuilt into biology lessons in and outside the classroom.

Keywords: socioscientific issues, decision-making, education for sustainable development, model of educational reconstruction, smoothie;