Sustainable food in teacher training: evaluation of a proposal for educational intervention

Abstract

The sustainability of the food system is a particularly relevant issue today as it is a challenge to ensure environmental sustainability and the need to guarantee access to food in all parts of the world to promote social equity. Given this, the need to promote a sustainable food transition in consumption habits becomes imperative. It is crucial that teachers be sensitised to this issue so that they can try to develop a critical and globally aware student body that is committed to a social transformation towards sustainability. The main objective of this study is discovering the opinions of preservice teachers (PSTs) on sustainable food. It also has two specific objectives: (1) analyze the initial opinions of prospective teachers on sustainable food before and after carrying out an educational intervention on this topic, and (2) study the relationship between the opinions of PSTs and variables related to their personality or their relationship with nature, among others. A longitudinal pre-test-intervention-post-test design using quantitative methods was carried out to explore the opinions of 49 pre-service teachers studying for a degree in Primary Education before and after the educational intervention. The results show changes in the opinions of future teachers after the application of the educational intervention and differences towards food sustainability according to some socio-demographic variables such as gender.