Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T06:12:28.178Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Schooling Food in Contemporary Times: Taking Stock

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2015

Deana Leahy ,
Emily Gray ,
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie  and
Chris Eames
Deana Leahy*
Affiliation:
Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Emily Gray
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie
Affiliation:
Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Chris Eames
Affiliation:
University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
*
Address for correspondence: Deana Leahy, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Clayton VIC 3800, Australia. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Over the past decade we have witnessed a proliferation and intensification of food pedagogies across a range of sites. This article begins by considering two pedagogical scenes that attempt to address food. They were enacted within educational settings in Australia; one a Year 8 (13 years of age) health education classroom, the other a professional learning seminar. Each were heavily imbued with the obesity prevention imperatives that have come to characterise social, political and educational discourse around food in contemporary times. Using these scenes as a springboard, we move to consider the place where we initially envisioned food might intersect with environmental education. We imagined that it would be a space with significant potential for approaching teaching and learning about food in new ways. Deploying menu as metaphor, the authors explore the possibilities for this new terrain and argue that bringing a Foucauldian inspired ‘ethics of discomfort’ to the table might help us take stock of contemporary approaches and their effects. Given the dominance of crisis-driven responses that tend to characterise school food education, we conclude by suggesting that we need to interrupt the dominant discourses that circulate around food and try to engage with some new possibilities for teaching and learning about food.

Keywords

foodfood educationfeminismobesitysocio-technologicaltransformative learning
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 31 , Special Issue 1: Putting Food on the Table , July 2015 , pp. 1 - 11
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beausoleil, N. (2009). An impossible task? Preventing disordered eating in the context of the current obesity panic. In Wright, J. & Harwood, V. (Eds.), Biopolitics and the obesity epidemic: Governing bodies (pp. 93–107). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Birdsall, S. (2010). Empowering students to act: Learning about, through and from the nature of action. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 26, 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burrows, L., & Wright, J. (2007). Prescribing practices: Shaping healthy children in schools. International Journal of Children's Rights, 15, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutter-Mackenzie, A. (2009). Multicultural school gardens: Creating engaging garden spaces in learning about language, culture and environment. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 122–135.Google Scholar
Flowers, R., & Swan, E. (2012). Pedagogies of doing good: Problematisations, authorities, technologies and teleologies in food activism. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 52, 532–572.Google Scholar
Gough, A. (in press). Voices from the margins: Towards anti-oppressive environmental education. In Russell, C., Dillon, J., & Breunig, M. (Eds.), Environmental education reader. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Gough, A., & Whitehouse, H. (2003). The ‘nature’ of environmental education research from a feminist poststructuralist viewpoint. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 8, 31–43.Google Scholar
Greer, G. (2000). The whole woman. London: Anchor.Google ScholarPubMed
Hart, R. A. (1997). Children's participation: The theory and practice of involving young citizens in community development and environmental care. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Harwood, V., & Rasmussen, M.L., (2004). Studying schools with an ‘ethics of discomfort.’ In Baker, B. and Heyning, K. (Eds.), Dangerous coagulations: The uses of Foucault in the study of education (pp. 305–321). New York, NY: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Hillcoat, J., & Rensburg, E. (1998). Consuming passions: Educating the empty self. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 57–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunger Notes. (2015). 2015 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm#Hunger_concepts_and_definitionsGoogle Scholar
Jensen, B.B., & Schnack, K. (1997). The action competence approach in environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 3, 163–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, P., Severson, R.L., & Ruckert, J.H. (2009). The human relation with nature and technological nature. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 37–42. doi:10.1111/j.1467–8721.2009.01602.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leahy, D. (2009). Disgusting pedagogies. In Wright, J. & Harwood, V. (Eds.), Biopolitics and the obesity epidemic: Governing bodies (pp. 172–182). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leahy, D., & Gray, E.M. (2014). Popular pedagogical assemblages in the health education classroom. In Benson, P. & Chik, A. (Eds.), Popular culture, pedagogy and teacher education: International perspectives (pp. 184–208). London, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leahy, D., & Pike, J. (2015). ‘Just say no to pies’: Food pedagogies, health education and governmentality. In Flowers, R. & Swan, E. (Eds.), Food pedagogies (pp. 223–243). Ashgate: EnglandGoogle Scholar
Lunchbox Blitz. (n.d.). Retrieved June 2, 2015 from http://www.lunchboxblitz.com/Google Scholar
McPhail, D. (2013). Resisting biopedagogies of obesity in a problem population: Understandings of healthy eating and healthy weight in a Newfoundland and Labrador community. Critical Public Health, 23, 289–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nutrition Australia. (2014). National nude food day: The complete school resource booklet. Canberra, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Orr, D.W. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world. Albany, NY: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Pike, J. (2015). Young people and food: The moral project of the healthy self. In Kelly, P. & Kamp, A. (Eds.), A critical youth studies for the 21st century (pp. 87–104). The Netherlands: Kloninklijke Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pike, J., & Leahy, D. (2012). School food and the pedagogies of parenting. Australian Journal of Adult Education, 52, 434–460.Google Scholar
Powell, D., & Gard, M. (2014). The governmentality of childhood obesity: Coca cola, public health and primary schools. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Studies of Education, doi:10.1080/01596306.2014.905045.Google Scholar
Preston, L. (2013). Consuming environmentalism: Following codes or practicing ethics. The Social Educator, 30, 19–24.Google Scholar
Rathzel, N., & Uzzell, D. (2009). Transformative environmental education: A collective rehearsal for reality. Environmental Education Research, 15, 263–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rich, E. (2010). Obesity assemblages and surveillance in schools. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23, 803–821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, C., Cameron, E., Socha, T., & McNinch, H. (2013). ‘Fatties cause global warming’: Fat pedagogy and environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 27–45.Google Scholar
Scrinis, G. (2008). On the ideology of nutritionism. Gastromica: The Journal of Food and People, 8, 39–48.Google Scholar
Vander Schee, C., & Gard, M. (2014). Healthy, happy and ready to teach, or why kids can't learn from fat teachers: The discursive politics of school reform and teacher health Critical Public Health, 24, 210–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver-Hightower, M.B. (2011). Why education researchers should take school food seriously. Educational Researcher, 40, 15–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welch, R., McMahon, S., & Wright, J. (2012). The medicalisation of food pedagogies in primary schools and popular culture: a case for awakening subjugated knowledges. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 33, 713–728.Google Scholar
Williams, D.R., & Brown, J.D. (2012). Learning gardens and sustainability education. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar