TASTE AS DIDACTIC ELEMENT IN FOOD EDUCATION Professor Karen Wistoft Danish Department of Education Aarhus University Copenhagen, Denmark

Background

• Taste has for many years been neglected in relation to food education for children as well as students in school.

• Food education has almost exclusively focused on health and nutrition and been dominated by rigid norms leaving none or little space for the children to reflect upon their eating experience or engage in the sensual pleasures of food.

• In the last decades, however, we have witnessed an increasing interest in taste education.

Initially: Critical awareness?

• Can this engagement with the sensuality of eating be understood as an innovative way of framing food education for children in which the corporeal and individual experience of food can be taken serious and used as a tool to facilitate critical awareness of food among children?

Photos: Taste in outdoor cooking

Research questions

I. How is taste used in contemporary food education for children?

II. How is taste used in a specific food education competition program in the Danish national school?

Different concepts of taste A. Natural science: stimulation of specific senses and sense

receptors (taste cells/taste buds), towards five basic tastes: sour, sweet, salty, bitter and umami (Mouritsen, 2014; Mouritsen

& Styrbæk 2015)

B. Culture and sociology: taste is specific in contexts, part of social class and cultural communication (Bourdieu, 1979)

C. Education research: taste is rooted in individual and

social values, created through the interplay between individual memories/experiences and collective structures (Leer & Wistoft, 2015)

Methods

A. Critical literature review on how taste is used in contemporary food education. Evaluation of intended learning in 15 selected studies

B. Survey based on questionnaire among students (N= 769) who have participated a cooking competition in the Home economics in the Danish school.

Critical literature review (Wistoft & Leer, 2016)

• By ‘critical literature review’ means that we analyze selected studies from a Nordic tradition of reflexive and critical health education research perspective.

• We understand learning as expansion of consciousness

• We stresses the importance of reflective decision making and critical awareness inclusive decision and action competence development

(Simovska & Jensen, 2009; Wistoft 2009, 2012, 2013).

Critical review steps 1) Creating a protocol with search strategy, review question, search

word and phrasing of search channels listing criterions for inclusion and exclusion

2) Phrase: “Taste AND Food AND Learning OR Education AND Children OR Students”

3) Screening, mapping and scoping of studies by reading of title, abstracts and key words (if there were doubts concerning relevance, we read the entire study).

4) Assessment of quality in relation to criterions for inclusion and exclusion

5) Extraction of data to be included in our study

6) Critical analysis and synthesis of the data

Review questions

a) What concepts of taste are provided in the 15 selected studies?

b) What are the learning goals and the learning approaches of the taste education initiatives?

c) What kind of value clarification is provided?

d) How are the children’s integrity and critical decisions weighed?

Main findings • The studies on taste education programs have a very

reductive understanding of taste combined with learning and they are essentially totally distrustful concerning children’s taste.

• Taste is seen as a barrier for ‘correct’ eating habits and not as an important sense, a source to pleasure, or a central instrument of sensually understanding or approaching the world.

• Taste education becomes a tool to control children by pushing them towards predefined and rigid eating behaviors “hegemonic nutrition”

Conclusion A

• Food education building on ‘hegemonic nutrition’ and traditional didactic elements do not condition critical awareness of food and taste among children

• Learnings goals related to taste cannot be predefined, and the children must be involved in reflective processes with the significance and meaning of taste, as well as the aesthetic, cultural and social dimensions of taste

• This require different initial reflections on the pedagogical task, including a reflective clarification of the values and forms of knowledge and skills involved, as well as the roles played by teachers, students and researchers.

Quantitative study (Christensen & Wistoft, 2016)

• Investigation of school students’ work with taste in relation to their own expected learning

• The students have participated a cooking competition program related to Home economics in the Danish school • 769 student respondents

• 42 school classes, mainly 6th and 7th grade

• 6 geographical regions of Denmark

The cooking competition program

• Three main didactic elements: • Student’s motivation

• Student participation

• Student’s innovation

Theoretical self-reported learning expectation perspective (Wistoft, 2009; 2012; 2013)

• Starting point in systems theory, where the basic concept of subject/object is replaced by the theoretical construct of system/environment (Luhmann, 2000, 2006)

• It is central that the teaching is able to grab the students’ attention – the teaching needs to make sense to the students in order to engage them (Wistoft, 2012)

• Self-reporting is a method to get the respondents to communicate about their own learning:

• “Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform” (Hattie, 2015)

• Students’ learning expectations are viewed as self-reported learning.

Student’s questionnaire • 34 questions applied to point 6 answers on the Likert

scale: • Expected learning (7 items; α =.78)

• Experience of working with taste (3 items; α =.77)

• Experience of working innovatively (3 items; α =.72)

• Experience of student participation (3 items; α =.70)

• Experience of collaboration (3 items; α =.60)

• Experience of the element of competition (1 item)

• Students’ general well-being (3 items; α =.59)

• Motivation for food and meals as a result of participation in Food Fight (3 items; α =.75)

• Involvement in food and meals in everyday life (5 items; α =.49)

Multiple regression analysis • How great is the effect of different variables on expected

learning, and what is the difference between the effects?

• Different variables are constructed on the basis of a varying number of questions, which are answered on different scales

• All variables in the multivariate analysis have been standardized

• Our multivariately makes it is possible to combine and analyse the constructed variables and background variables in 78 combinations.

Conclusion B • The experience of working with taste within food education

have an equally positive effect on students’ expected learning – even more that of the traditional didactic elements: motivation, participation and innovation

• Prioritizing motivation, participation and innovation entails the risk that learning and work regarding taste are thrust into the background and students would not achieve the positive effect on learning that working with taste can yield!

Teachers need to remember to incorporate taste as a didactic approach promoting student’s achieving learning goals.

Thank you for your attention

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