Päivi Palojoki

Adolescents’ school lunch practices as an educational resource

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine Finnish ninth grade pupils’ (15-16 years) perspectives on hot school lunches and consider the potential of these perspectives as a resource for food and health education. Design/methodology/approach – Data include observations, essays, and visually elicitated focus group discussions from a larger qualitative case study. Data were collected during the term 2012-2013. Findings – Pupils considered the lunch break as their free time and valued discussions with friends. The taste of school food was important for them. Pupils solved contradicting expectations connected to school lunches through constructing social hierarchies, making compromises, and conforming to peers’ or general opinions. Desire for social belonging and independence were important justifications for breaking food-related rules. Research limitations/implications – Due to the focus on one school, further research needs to address contextual variation in different schools and age groups, as well...

Food Education: From Normative Models to Promoting Agency

This chapter focuses on developing food education. Its starting point is the complexity of modern lives and the importance of acknowledging students as active agents in their educational experiences. The text is divided into three sections; each offers a distinct viewpoint on the background and potential of developing food education: the shifting focus of food education, promoting agency through food sense, and creating collaborative food education in Finland. The article leans on the multidisciplinary expertise of the authors in the fields of education, home economics pedagogy, and sociology of food; the first two explore teaching and learning about food and eating, and the third one emphasizes food as a part of culture and identity.