Detailed Conceptions Relating to Food Education in the Moroccan Textbooks: What Models of Health?

Food education is a component of health education which plays an important role in the development
of citizenship and human resources of a country. Food is present in our daily life and in our curricula.
Textbooks are one of the main components in implementing a curriculum and an important step in the
didactic transposition. The textbooks editor’s beliefs and values have a direct influence on this
transposition. In this framework, we are interested to identify the food education conceptions used in
Moroccan school textbooks.
Methods: The corpus of this study was composed of 7 text-books. We chose as a tool of investigation
a grid elaborated in a common work with all the research teams in the European project Biohead -
Citezen.
Results: The Health Promotion conception is adopted in the images and the texts in the primary and
middle school. Food education is absent in the high school. It is illustrated, mostly by its "Health"
conception and rarely by the "Environmental" conception. But we also find the Biomedical Model
approach that is represented especially by "Pathology" conception.
Discussion: Our results match with those found in the studies interested in health education carried
out in the framework of European project Biohead –Citizen. An effective Food Education could
produce changes in knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, it’s could facilitate the acquisition of skills, and
produce changes in behavior or lifestyles. Is it really contributed to these changes? It remains to verify
the changes in students.