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Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings
BACKGROUND: Establishing healthy eating behaviours in early life has implications for health over the life course. As the majority of Australian children aged five and under regularly attend early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, mealtimes at ECEC settings present opportunities to promo...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6704560/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31438990 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-019-0838-x |
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author | Harte, Suzanne Theobald, Maryanne Trost, Stewart G. |
author_facet | Harte, Suzanne Theobald, Maryanne Trost, Stewart G. |
author_sort | Harte, Suzanne |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Establishing healthy eating behaviours in early life has implications for health over the life course. As the majority of Australian children aged five and under regularly attend early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, mealtimes at ECEC settings present opportunities to promote healthy eating behaviors. The purpose of this study was to explore children’s eating behaviours and interactions between peers and educators during mealtimes in ECEC settings, with the aim of constructing a grounded theory of children’s mealtimes in ECEC. METHODS: In-depth qualitative case studies were undertaken at two ECEC centres. Each centre had been assessed as meeting national quality standards and were located in a lower socioeconomic status area. Data collection consisted of direct observation, video recording, written memos, and daily field notes. The analysis included open coding of video recorded mealtimes and field notes resulting in the allocation of initial codes and focused codes. Codes were grouped to form thematic categories and emergent themes. Theoretical sampling was used to identify mealtime interactions exemplifying thematic categories. RESULTS: Data from 47 mealtimes was available. A grounded theory of children’s mealtimes was developed to demonstrate children’s outcomes at mealtimes. Outcomes were represented by five thematic categories: rituals, learning moments, food preference development, socialisation and child agency. Mealtimes offered opportunities for children to construct a community of peers with their educators by sharing information, stories and occasionally their food. Each centre established its own unique culture within mealtimes observed as the children were involved in routines and rituals. CONCLUSIONS: Mealtimes in ECEC settings are a unique cultural phenomenon co-constructed by the ECEC community of children and educators. The findings highlight the importance of mealtimes as a time for learning and socialization. The routine and rituals of mealtimes provide an opportunity for educators to support the development of healthy food preferences. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6704560 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67045602019-08-22 Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings Harte, Suzanne Theobald, Maryanne Trost, Stewart G. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act Research BACKGROUND: Establishing healthy eating behaviours in early life has implications for health over the life course. As the majority of Australian children aged five and under regularly attend early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, mealtimes at ECEC settings present opportunities to promote healthy eating behaviors. The purpose of this study was to explore children’s eating behaviours and interactions between peers and educators during mealtimes in ECEC settings, with the aim of constructing a grounded theory of children’s mealtimes in ECEC. METHODS: In-depth qualitative case studies were undertaken at two ECEC centres. Each centre had been assessed as meeting national quality standards and were located in a lower socioeconomic status area. Data collection consisted of direct observation, video recording, written memos, and daily field notes. The analysis included open coding of video recorded mealtimes and field notes resulting in the allocation of initial codes and focused codes. Codes were grouped to form thematic categories and emergent themes. Theoretical sampling was used to identify mealtime interactions exemplifying thematic categories. RESULTS: Data from 47 mealtimes was available. A grounded theory of children’s mealtimes was developed to demonstrate children’s outcomes at mealtimes. Outcomes were represented by five thematic categories: rituals, learning moments, food preference development, socialisation and child agency. Mealtimes offered opportunities for children to construct a community of peers with their educators by sharing information, stories and occasionally their food. Each centre established its own unique culture within mealtimes observed as the children were involved in routines and rituals. CONCLUSIONS: Mealtimes in ECEC settings are a unique cultural phenomenon co-constructed by the ECEC community of children and educators. The findings highlight the importance of mealtimes as a time for learning and socialization. The routine and rituals of mealtimes provide an opportunity for educators to support the development of healthy food preferences. BioMed Central 2019-08-22 /pmc/articles/PMC6704560/ /pubmed/31438990 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-019-0838-x Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Harte, Suzanne Theobald, Maryanne Trost, Stewart G. Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
title | Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
title_full | Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
title_fullStr | Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
title_full_unstemmed | Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
title_short | Culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
title_sort | culture and community: observation of mealtime enactment in early childhood education and care settings |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6704560/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31438990 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-019-0838-x |
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