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Drawing on a recent doctoral research project that examined the everyday life perspectives during kindergarten mealtime, this paper discusses the methodological issues related to the concepts of child and adult perspectives during mealtime, and to the children's participation in research. Through the paper, we take part in a critical discussion of the dichotomization of child and adult perspectives (Lee, 2001; Spyrou, 2011; Wyness, 2013). Instead, we suggest to approach perspectives as something that is created through situated interactions between human and nonhuman elements. We argue that perspectives could be studied as constructed from a net of human, material, and discursive elements. In doing so, we also question children's participation in research as a source for production of knowledge that is more authentic than that produced by adults (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008; Lomax, 2012). Hence, the kindergarten mealtime will provide the arena for discussing methodological issues that are relevant beyond studies on food and meals.

This article analyses food schools in Copenhagen. Organized differently from the majority of Copenhagen schools, twelve food schools have chefs on site and involve pupils in preparing, cooking, and serving the daily meals. Four food schools formed the empirical basis of a qualitative study conducted in 2016, which involved interviewing pupils, food school coordinators, management, and chefs. The empirical data show that food schools entail differing understandings of a common set of visions introduced by the municipality about food education including topics such as taste, teaching and dining atmosphere. The variety of understandings and practices problematize the notion of "best practice" as a way for a municipality to unify the schools and formulate advice for new food schools. Instead, the article emphasizes the need to address the complexity and to open for a broader view on how to work with situated everyday practices also addressing e.g. materiality and bodily aspects. Only by accepting the variety of expressions, the visions of food education can be addressed and worked with in a non-essentialist manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deploying an everyday life approach, this article focuses on the kindergarten meal, defined as a space in which humans, materials and discursive elements interact. The article identifies and discusses two co-existing perspectives on the everyday meals that emphasise children as future beings and here-and-now beings. Through the concepts of smoothing and striation the paper discusses how these perspectives produce different mechanisms of regulation and agency, and position the eaters differently. The paper emphasises kindergarten mealtime as an ambiguous space that does not offer simple discussions about good and bad meal situations. The paper thereby adds to the existing literature within children’s geographies which emphasise interactional, relational and material aspects of children’s lives. It does so by revisiting some concepts, striation and smoothing, that has been used to explore children’s spaces and child–adult relations, but argue that these concepts describe ambivalent and complex processes in children’s and adult’s everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]