Teaching and learning about human nutrition: a constructivist approach

The results of a constructivism-based teaching programme on human nutrition for students in the second year of secondary education (13- and 14-year-olds) are analysed in light of the ideas held by the students before and after implementation of the programme. The results show how most of the students who participated in this programme reorganized their ideas concerning the nutritional process and achieved a fuller understanding of how nutrition comprises a series of related and integrated processes. Other students, who followed a more conventional method based on the teacher explanation and textbooks, tended to have erroneous or incomplete ideas concerning the nutritional process.