Curriculum

Curriculum Objective

There is a growing demand for nutrition education because of the fundamental importance and scientific evidence of the role it plays in human health. Giving Your Body the Best curriculum provides concise yet easy-to-understand lessons about the principal role of nutrition in promoting good health and reducing the risk of several diseases. It is aimed at helping learners achieve a better quality of life through behavioral modification that supports a healthy lifestyle.

The overall objective for this curriculum is that learners will develop:

• An understanding of the basic concepts of food and nutrition.
• The ability to incorporate this knowledge into a lifestyle that improves health and quality of life.

Learning Theory

Giving Your Body the Best curriculum incorporates Albert Bandura’s Social-Cognitive Theory (also known as the Social-Learning Theory) into its learning components. Nutrition Education Assistants serve as instructors and role models, who demonstrate to learners the positive impact of nutrition education on a healthy lifestyle. Each lesson has both a verbal and visual component.

The verbal component contains a concise, ready-to-use dialogue for the instructor to read. The visual component displays colorful graphics and text that highlight key points to enhance the learner’s knowledge acquisition. Learning is further reinforced through action planning and hands-on experience. For example:

• Learner sets mini goals at the end of each lesson to achieve small, incremental behavioral modification.
• Learner observes the instructor demonstrating cooking skills and practices those techniques to acquire new skills through the imitative learning process.

The success of this learning process is measured by the Evaluation/Reporting System (ERS) pre- and post-testing of dietary intake and behavioral checklist.