Creating Food Learning Opportunities for Adults Within Urban Settings: A Framework for Food Pedagogies

Abstract

Globally, food is acknowledged as a primary focus for addressing challenges facing cities. City councils create and support food-related policies or strategies to enhance healthy and sustainable environments, and multiple food practitioners engage closely with these initiatives. However, the visibility of educational aspects of food within governments, policy development, public spaces, or across society is limited. There is a lack of evidence about how pedagogical frameworks can inform these initiatives. This study aims to develop a draft food pedagogies framework, whose application can inform food initiatives beyond the classroom to increase adults’ awareness of, engagement with and empowered action relating to food, with the goal to advance societal health and sustainability. A qualitative approach included semi-structured interviews with 39 experienced food leaders from diverse food-related fields in Australia. Using thematic analysis, five key themes to assist adults learn about food in everyday life settings were identified: (1) Making use of (in)formal pedagogical spaces in communities; (2) Encouraging interactions with a range of people related to food; (3) Creating enjoyable and practical experiences as part of daily lives; (4) Developing supportive and transparent systems that reflect communities’ needs; and (5) Utilizing broader social issues. A proposed framework, based on the five themes and existing theoretical frameworks, can be used to inform policy makers and diverse food practitioners to develop urban food strategies that aim to create food-centred changes within urban settings toward societal health and sustainability.

Barriers to Urban Food Action: Relevance of Food Pedagogies

“…The second consideration of the findings is how to overcome these barriers to foodrelated actions. A recently developed food pedagogy framework [21] has potential relevance to address and embed resilience against the barriers when developing or implementing urban food initiatives. The framework utilizes a social perspective that encompasses everyday spaces, interactions with a range of people related to food, practical experiences, supportive systems, and engagement with social issues.…”

“…Such clarification is important, as food practitioners in the community do not systematically consider their educative roles. Community food leaders may increase their food leadership and impacts if they apply learning frameworks, pedagogies, to their food actions [21].…”