Teachers’ Awareness of Approaches to Guiding Children’s Eating Behaviors

Abstract

  This study investigated how teachers deal with children's behavior during mealtimes. Using questionnaires, teachers were asked to self-evaluate both effective and ineffective methods they had used to address children's (3 years or older) problematic behavior during meals. The teachers used various verbal and non-verbal means to address children's behavior, depending on the situation, and felt that encouraging children to succeed, such as by using their classmates as examples, was effective, while scolding children without proper communication and without being objective was not. The study showed that teachers must be creative in developing a range of strategies to handle different children. Teachers must also be flexible and open to new strategies, rather than relying on methods that have previously been effective. Therefore, to establish a child-friendly environment during mealtimes, teachers with different experiences should advise each other and continuously learn from the children by observing them and adjusting their methods accordingly.