The Development and Evaluation of a Nutrition Education Program for Kindergarten, Mild, and Moderately Retarded Children at The University of Tennessee Child Development Center

The purpose of this study was to develop nutrition education material to be used in teaching normal kindergarten, and elementary educable, and trainable mentally retarded children of the same mental age. This study proposed to show that mentally retarded children can make significant improvement in their knowledge of nutrition when taught using appropriate nutrition education methods and materials. Due to Public Law 94-142, mentally retarded children are being mainstreamed into the regular classrooms where nutrition education programs are being conducted as a result of The Child Nutrition Act. However, little information has been made available concerning methods and guidelines to follow when trying to nutritionally educate the mentally retarded.The nutrition education program herein developed was based on the Basic Four Food Group approach and was presented to three classes of The Demonstration School at The University of Tennessee Child Development Center in Memphis, Tennessee. The three classes, a kindergarten class of normal children, a class of mildly retarded children, and a class of moderately retarded children, were given four one-hour lessons on each of the four food groups. In addition, a review lesson was given at the end of the study to help the children understand the four food groups as a whole so that they might apply what they learned to their daily eating habits.The lessons involved slide and picture presentations, food preparation, tasting parties, displays, and various sensory stimulating activities. In addition to the lessons taught by the researcher, supplemental activities were developed for use by the classroom teachers. The supplemental activities were designed to further emphasize the objectives of each lesson and included food preparation and tasting, games, puzzles, coloring projects, and songs.Pre and post-testing were used as a means of evaluating the program. A 50 question test consisted of 30 nonverbal and 20 verbal questions. Each child was given the pretest in its entirety. After each food group lesson, the questions from the pretest that pertained to that food group, were used as the post-test. The post-tests were given immediately following the nutrition lesson and again one week later after the teachers had completed the supplementary activities. The entire 50 question post-test was also given at the end of the study, one week following the review of the four food groups. Every student was tested individually.The results of the tests were statistically analyzed using a three-way analysis of variance and Newman Kuel's Multiple Comparison tests. No statistically significant differences were found in the abilities of the three classes to perform on the test, when the null hypothesis was tested at p = .01. This was true for both the verbal and nonverbal sections of the test. The classes improved significantly (p < .01) from pretest to all post-tests for each food lesson.This research supported the hypothesis that mentally retarded children can increase their knowledge of nutrition through education. However, more research is needed to see if these results can be duplicated in a public school system where outside factors are not as easily controlled as in The Child Development Center.