Programa nacional de alimentação escolar em ato:

caminhos de uma experiência de curricularização da extensão

Abstract

This is an experience report on the extension curriculum insertion in the Child and Adolescent Nutrition module (NCA) of the Nutrition Graduate Course at the Federal University of São Paulo, Baixada Santista campus, with the National School Meals Program (PNAE) as its central theme and the Extension Project Saberes e sabores: a Nutrição em diálogos. The history of the Project's actions points to investment in interdisciplinarity and the development of critical thinking, and the predominant activities in the pandemic years involved monitoring the work of nutritionists, the technical staff executing the PNAE. This action gave visibility to the gaps between the academic approach on the subject and the reality of the nutritionist's role in school meals. These findings guided the construction of the extension workload of the NCA module, based on the collective construction of classes and pedagogical approaches with professionals with extensive experience in child and adolescent care, including the PNAE. In addition to specific moments, school feeding was a cross-curricular theme, in dialogue with hunger and intersectoral food and nutrition policies. The roles of school cooks, nutritionists and students, as political actors and subjects of rights, gained prominence in classes taught by PNAE’s professionals and in the collective construction of extension curriculum insertion. The evaluation of this experience points to the power of the University's openness to the production of pedagogical paths together with social actors, providing graduates contact with real situations of school feeding and the appreciation of all actors involved in the execution of this policy which guarantees food as a right. The gradual construction of the extension curriculum insertion aims at including other actors in school feeding in the classes, as well as strengthening the training of critical nutritionists able to work from the Brazilian reality.