Food in Relation to Sustainable Development Expressed in Swedish Syllabuses of Home and Consumer Studies: At Present and Past

Abstract

Little is known what the term sustainable development entails in relation to the school subject of home and consumer studies and the subject's knowledge area of food. The aim is to illustrate how food is expressed in national syllabuses of home and consumer studies at present and in the past, and its operationalization into sustainable development. Using qualitative content analysis, the results show three themes: (a) maintenance of the family and household, (b) maintenance of the earth's resources and (c) maintenance of the future generations. The first theme is characterized by concrete tangible judgements based on experiences of family members and is predominant in earlier syllabuses. The second and third themes are predominant in later syllabuses and show a movement into complex and abstract contemplations of global ecological, social and economic conditions for the purchase of food. The presentation of food in relation to sustainable development has changed over the years, consequently demonstrating the didactic challenge of home and consumer studies.

Home Economics Teachers’ Perceptions of Facilitating and Inhibiting Factors When Teaching Sustainable Food Consumption

“…Thus, the Swedish syllabus of HE includes a mission to educate young people to think independently about responsible action in making sustainable food consumption choices. However, the notion behind the term SD is comprehensive and contested, and the syllabus mission to implement its perspective in HE education remains vague [36]. This implies placing a heavy responsibility on individual teachers to interpret and translate what the ambiguous term could entail in the theoretical and practical implementation of food education.…”

“…Accordingly, there is a need to gain a better understanding of the possible influencing factors, conditioning teaching, and learning opportunities regarding education for sustainable development [36]. By identifying possible influencing factors surrounding a subject (such as perceived needs and challenging circumstances), opportunities for long-term quality progression throughout tailored resource development will increase [51], and HE teachers have a significant role to play in providing such identifications [28,29,32].…”

“…The present paper is a part of a wider project exploring the implementation and implications of incorporating a SD perspective in Swedish HE mission with an intention of generating a pertinent hypotheses and propositions for further inquiries. The overall project involves analysing data from syllabus documents [36], observations [33], recordings of in-class lessons [52], and interviews with practicing teachers. In this paper, the focus is on influencing factors as perceived by practicing teachers, in which in-depth interviews with a limited number of experienced teachers were deployed to contribute to such a hypothesis.…”

Exploring Sustainable Food Education as Multi-professional Collaboration between Home Economics and School Food Catering

“…Giving concrete examples and using action-oriented methods have previously been shown to be beneficial in sustainability education, as opposed to teaching through abstract concepts, which might sometimes be difficult for students to understand (Gelinder et al, 2020). A range of studies exemplify the unique opportunities inherent in home economics as a school subject to teach students how to handle food and thereby make sustainable food choices (e.g., Elorinne et al, 2017; Gelinder et al, 2020; Gisselvik, 2020). Food-related education is included in Finnish university-level programmes for teachers of home economics, as well as in the content descriptions of the school subject in the national core curriculum (FNAE, 2014), which provides a fruitful basis for wider collaboration.…”