History of Science and students’ ideas as reference to select contents about nutrition

Abstract

This work makes a historical review of the construction of knowledge about human nutrition, which evolved from simplistic and unconnected ideas on vital functions, focusing on the organism, to more complex concepts and inclusive of nutrition within the framework of the cell theory and its interaction with the environment. A review of various studies on conceptions of students with respect to human nutrition, showing that children are aware of the need for food to live, grow, although they do not have a unified idea of nutrition which integrates the functions of the different systems is also. Taking into account the historical review and the conceptions of the students, we have developed a series of key ideas that guide the progress of the study of human nutrition in primary education and first cycle of ESO. These key ideas clump around four dimensions: a) the concept of nutrition and his purpose; b) the organs and systems that take part in it; c) the nourishing and its importance for health and d) the repercussion of the nourishing process in the environment. In each dimension, three levels of increasing difficulty are considered, all of them associated with a series of questions in order to work on different key ideas about human nutrition.