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Globally, food is recognized as an issue in urban areas regarding diet-related diseases, unhealthy food environments, disconnection from culture and social relations, and environmental unsustainability. Concurrently, food also has a critical role in addressing the complex challenges cities are facing. Food pedagogies has emerged as a key element in tackling these food-related issues. However, pedagogical aspects of food are yet to be broadly explored and no known conceptual pedagogical framework has been developed. This paper aims to inform development of a conceptual framework for the enactment of food pedagogies, based on community food leaders' perspectives and experiences. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 39 experienced leaders from diverse food-related fields in Australia. Interviews were analyzed thematically. Four key themes emerged from participants' reflections on the current state of food-related activities: 'Awareness of food and food systems'; 'Enjoyment and social connections'; 'Experiential practices in everyday life': and 'Action for change.' These four themes are discussed both as aims of pedagogical practices and as essential pedagogical content for conceptualizing food pedagogies. A draft conceptual framework is developed to inform actions by policy makers, and public and private sector food practitioners to create healthy and sustainable societies through the medium of food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is growing pressure from the public health sector, government, environmental, medical and scientific fields to teach young people about food. However, little is known about pre-service teachers’ preparation in this area. This article addresses this gap by providing a case study of one approach to food education, which was purposefully designed to bring together two fields — health education and education for sustainability (EfS) — in teacher education in Victoria, Australia. This article outlines the ways in which this approach has the potential to challenge the conventions of both fields and ‘spaces’ of health (first space) and sustainability (second space), and gave rise to a possible ‘third space’ (Soja, 1996). This article uses data collected from Promoting Health Education, a 10-week course designed for generalist primary school pre-service teachers. It also utilises reflections from pre-service teachers and teacher educators (also the authors) to explore how they navigated first, second and third spaces. In doing so, the authors examine some of the learning potentials and difficulties within third spaces, including: designing third spaces; wrestling with the dominance of first space; complexities of second space; and questioning what might be lost and gained through the design of third spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]