Pedagogy, place, and food education in Australian schools: lessons from Tropical North Queensland
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Children today have limited food origin awareness. The further we move away from food production practices, the less exposure children have to them, and the more food vulnerable we become. This is especially true for children growing up in urban areas where there is limited space for food gardens. Schools have developed targeted pedagogical approaches to raise food origin awareness, and this paper examines one such attempt in Cairns, Australia. We compare how students aged 5-6 responded to an activity where they drew their immediate response to the word ‘food'. Comparisons were then made between those learning under explicit instruction and those using a more experiential, place-based pedagogical approach. The findings suggest students in the experiential class who regularly use the garden as a learning space drew significantly higher levels of fresh, place-appropriate fruits and vegetables (U = 61.5, P = 0.002). We discuss the ramifications of exposure to a globalised food system and how experiences at school can nurture children's understanding of food. We interpret the outcomes of the different pedagogical approaches and unravel the importance of ‘place' in a child's food experience. The evidence presented suggests that children’s food knowledge could improve if food education is bolstered with experiential and place-responsive pedagogies.
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Childrens Geographies
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1473-3277
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17
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Routledge
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DOI
10.1080/14733285.2024.2353752