Job Perception and the Need for Job Improvement among School Nutrition Teachers in Seoul

Objectives: The objectives of the study were to investigate the school nutrition teachers' perception on their job and to find out recommendations needed for its improvement in order to provide a quality foodservice and nutrition education at schools. Methods: A total of 219 school nutrition teachers in Seoul were surveyed using self- administered questionnaires. Results: The perceived importance of the 16 job duties was rated 3.8 based on a 5- point scale (1: very unimportant - 5: very important). The importance of six duties including nutrition management, production management, nutrition education, and food safety management were rated over 4 point but that of record-keeping for documents, official reporting, and service management was rated the lowest. Importance- Performance Analysis showed that nutrition management, receiving/storage management, production management, menu management, food safety management, and equipment/ facilities management should be emphasized to maintain the current performance of duties. The performance of the nutrition education and counseling needed to be improved since the importance scores were greater than average but the performance scores were lower than the average. Official reporting and miscellaneous jobs were rated the highest for simplification need. More than half of the respondents agreed that equipment/facilities management, miscellaneous jobs, service staff supervision, and service line supervision could be allocated to other school departments.