ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH EDUCATION INSTRUCTION WITH EARLY CHILDHOOD PRESERVICE TEACHERS

Health education plays a key role on Early Childhood Education. In this sense, Health Education programs are currently being carried out in the Spanish compulsory school as recommendations and guidelines. However, such approach has proved to be of limited effectiveness since at this school level the children lack the scientific knowledge required to understand and share the educational message. In this scenario it is a must to develop educational interventions with Early Childhood preservice teachers in order to promote in them positive attitudes towards Health Education. In the present research work, Early Childhood Education preservice teachers were asked about their nutrition habits in order to make them to reflect about the importance of proper Health Education and a very interesting feedback was collected. The considered sample consisted on 207 Early Childhood Education preservice teachers. Participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire containing questions related to diet concepts and habits. In order to collect that information, the tool Google Forms was employed. Finally, promising results are shown also about the perception of students about the importance of Health Education in Early Childhood Education and the utility of the worked nutrition concepts on their future performance as Early Childhood Education teachers.