How can sponsoring of sports teams influence healthy eating on children?

Field lab in marketing: Children consumer behaviour

How to promote healthy eating habits in children

Childhood’s overweight and obesity are a worrying issue in the world nowadays. The purpose of this study was to provide contributions to the promotion of healthy food by analyzing the impact of physical activity, parents’ influence and home meals frequency on children’s food choices. Structured questionnaires were used and were answered by 172 children between 10 and 14 years old and by their respective parents. Children and parents preferred healthy food vs. non-healthy food presenting the children’s healthy food choices a mean of 4.26 and the parent’s healthy food choices a mean of 4.47 in a scale ranging from 0 to 6. Our results also show that physical activity, parent’s education and home meals frequency did not have an impact on children’s food choices, contrasting to the sedentary behavior and parents’ choices which had a negative and positive correlation, respectively, with children’s food choices. Taking these results into account and using them to advise parents and companies, we underline that parents must guarantee an adequate children’s nutrition after doing physical efforts and control the time children watch TV and play computer games and companies may create marketing campaigns and educational programs in order to promote healthy food, improve children’s eating habits and reduce the childhood obesity prevalence.

The influence of sports events endorsement on children’s perceptions of healthy food products and brands

Field lab in marketing: Children consumer behaviour

Can gendered advergames make children develop favorable attitudes and behaviors towards healthy food?

This paper aims to analyze the possibility of having an impact of gender segmentation in food advergames on children’s attitudes and behaviors towards healthy food. A specific healthy advergame with three versions – two segmented by gender and one neutral gendered – was developed for the study. A total of 286 Portuguese children from 7 to 9 years old participated in the study and were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control groups. After playing the advergame, children answered a structured questionnaire to evaluate liking and purchase intention of healthy food, as well as, perceived fun and perceived healthiness. The results suggested that advergames segmented by gender did not influence children’s liking, purchase intention and perceived fun of healthy food, since children already had positive eating behaviors. Moreover, we confirmed that children presented a high perceived healthiness.

Dos reis da História aos reis das histórias: ficção para a infância e educação histórica no 4º ano do 1ºCEB

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico

Pensar, testar, opinar e construir: a resolução de problemas no jardim de infância e primeiro ciclo

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico

Quando ler se torna um prazer: contributo da promoção da leitura literária na infância

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico

A Hora do Conto: descobrir os livros e o prazer da leitura de histórias

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1ºCiclo do Ensino Básico

The economic crisis in Portugal and children’s rights to non-discrimination

The consequences that arose from the ‘global economy’ have been significant in Portuguese children’s lives and we believe it is fundamental to reflect on the ongoing structuring of childhood through this global culture/ideology and the concrete implications that they have. It is also important to understand how childhood is constructed and experienced, as well as to consider the impacts of political economic conditions on children’s lives and in childhood in general, taking into account the effects brought on by public policies. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the ways through which the economic crisis affecting the general Portuguese population has impacted children in particular and promoted discrimination and a lack of opportunities in childhood. We will focus on two dimensions: first, on general data about the ongoing policies that have been reducing social rights, increasing poverty rates and threatening basic rights such as educational and health rights, to show their impact on children´s lives. Second, we will discuss some data collected with children throughout different research projects in order to characterize the meanings and impacts of the crisis in their lives from their points of view

Record, play, go…

This workshop aims at stimulating children’s oral language skills by involving them on playing and creating different language games or activities using the t-stories interface. The interface allows recording and playing audio on the stories’ modules, as well as recording and playing based on identification with NFC tags that can be used as sticker on objects, paper, or other materials and placed in different locations. After the presentation of t-stories by the workshop facilitators, children will have the opportunity to explore the interface on their own, then they will be asked to participate in different language games, whereby they actively create their own content. Afterwards children will be challenged to imagine and create activities for their peers.

“It’s a complicated situation”. Harm in everyday experiences with technology. A qualitative study with school-aged children

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (Especialidade de Tecnologia Educativa)

The Portuguese programme ‘one laptop per child’ and its impact on families: a study on parents’ and children’s perspectives

This paper intends to present and reflect upon some of the findings emerging from a research project entitled “Navigating with ‘Magalhães’: Study on the Impact of Digital Media on Schoolchildren” that was conducted at the Communication and Society Research Centre at the University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. The project focused on the politics of the governmental programme “One Laptop per Child” part of the Portuguese Technological Plan for Education, and the uses of the “Magalhães” computer, and other media, by children aged 8-10 years. This paper analyses the impact of this particular public policy on digital literacy of young children based mostly on the perspectives of parents and their modes of mediation. It also debates parents’ and children’s perspectives on parental rules on computer and Internet usage. It ends by concluding that the impact of this programme occurred mainly at the level of access rather than the social and educational uses and practices. It also highlights the importance of family in the way children access and use ICT.

Typologies of post-divorce coparenting and parental well-being, parenting quality and children’s psychological adjustment

First published online: 30 October 2015

Psychosocial adjustment and physical health in children of divorce

Objective: To review the literature on the effects of parental divorce over the psychological maladjustment and physical health problems in children of divorced parents, thus contributing to the integration of existing scientific knowledge based on the biopsychosocial model of the impact of divorce on children’s physical health as proposed by Troxel and Matthews (2004). Sources: Review of the literature using MEDLINE and PsycInfo (1980-2007) databases, selecting the most representative articles on the subject. Special attention was paid to contributions by internationally renowned investigators on the subject. Summary of the findings: Divorce may be responsible for a decline of physical and psychological health in children. The developmental maladjustment of children is not triggered by divorce itself, but rather by other risk factors associated with it, such as interparental conflict, parental psychopathology, decline in socio-economic level, inconsistency in parenting styles, a parallel and conflicting co-parenting relationship between parents and low levels of social support. Such risk factors trigger maladjusted developmental pathways, marked by psychopathological symptoms, poor academic performance, worst levels of physical health, risk behavior, exacerbated psychophysiological responses to stress and weakening of the immune system. Conclusions: Clear links were observed between experiencing parental divorce and facing problems of physical and psychological maladjustment in children. Divorce is a stressor that should be considered by health professionals as potentially responsible for maladjusted neuropsychobiological responses and for decline in children’s physical health.

Children's play and leisure : connections with emotional competence

O jogo e o lazer são elementos importantes para o desenvolvimento das crianças. O objetivo geral desta tese foi o de investigar o modo como o jogo e o lazer estão relacionados com diferentes aspetos das competências emocional e social das crianças e jovens. Nesta tese foram investigados três aspetos do jogo: o tempo, a forma e o nível social, diferentes formas de lazer, e vários elementos chave do funcionamento sócio-emocional, através da combinação de observações naturalistas, tarefas, questionários e de um método inovador de mensuração, baseado em Identificação por Rádio-Frequência. O panorama que surge dos estudos incluídos nesta tese é que o jogo e o lazer estão relacionados com o funcionamento sócio-emocional, embora de formas distintas, e por vezes inesperadas. Os estudos no recreio revelaram que as crianças envolvem-se predominantemente no jogo de atividade física. Contudo, enquanto que uma forma de jogo de atividade física, o jogo de exercício, foi associado a melhor competência social, a outra forma, o jogo de luta-e-perseguição, foi associado à agressividade. O facto de o jogo de faz-de-conta, em estudos anteriores, ter sido maioritariamente estudado em espaços interiores, pode explicar o porquê das associações negativas encontradas entre o jogo de faz-de-conta, quer em grupo, quer solitário (nas raparigas) e a competência sócio-emocional, que contrastam com a literatura. De facto, as crianças que não conseguem juntar-se aos seus pares no jogo de exercício podem optar por esta alternativa, o que sugere que crianças socialmente competentes poderão retirar maior vantagem das oportunidades existentes, adaptando melhor os seus comportamentos de jogo. As crianças mais velhas têm geralmente mais liberdade de decisão sobre o seu tempo de lazer. Quando perguntámos às crianças mais velhas e aos adolescentes como passavam a sua semana, as atividades de ecrã destacaram-se. Contudo, as atividades de ecrã e as atividades intelectuais foram relacionadas a mais problemas de saúde mental, enquanto que as atividades desportivas foram associadas a melhor saúde mental. Concluindo, diferentes formas de jogo e de lazer podem ter diferentes funções, de uma forma positiva ou negativa, dependendo da situação em que a criança se encontra.