"Healthy Eating" in the Pedagogical Residency Program

a Dialectical Journey in the Classroom

Abstract

This article analyzes the experience of the "Healthy Eating" project developed by teaching residents of the Pedagogical Residency Program (PRP) with 1st to 5th-grade Elementary School classes in Pitanga, Paraná, Brazil. Grounded in Historical-Critical Pedagogy (Saviani, 2013) and Cultural-Historical Psychology (Vygotsky, 2007), the project integrated scientific knowledge about nutrition with students' daily experiences through playful strategies such as 3D food pyramid assembly, classification games, and artistic productions. The methodology followed Gasparin's (2012) five dialectical steps, highlighting the central role of teacher mediation in overcoming challenges like cognitive diversity and interpersonal conflicts. Results revealed the transformation of students' naïve perceptions into critical awareness about food processing and nutritional inequalities, with tangible impacts including changes in family habits and incorporation of produced materials into the school's pedagogical collection. The experience solidified as a laboratory for transformative practices, reinforcing food as a cross-cutting axis for discussing social justice and autonomy while validating the formative potential of pedagogical residencies in theory-practice integration.