Food pedagogy-key elements for urban health and sustainability: A scoping review

Creating Food Learning Opportunities for Adults Within Urban Settings: A Framework for Food Pedagogies

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.

Barriers to Urban Food Action: Relevance of Food Pedagogies

Cities strive to feed growing populations while at the same time minimize the environmental impacts of their food systems. To support cities to achieve their goals, they require systematic and practical actions, including identification of the needs and capacities of food practitioners to guide and support food-related policies and initiatives. This study aims to explore barriers to food-related actions in everyday settings and the potential of a food pedagogy framework to overcome such barriers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 experienced food leaders from diverse food-related areas in Australia. Thematic analysis identified six key themes related to weaknesses in food-related actions, including lack of: a broad understanding about food; acknowledgement of values of food in everyday lives; a broad pedagogical lens; a responsible entity; organizational supports; and coordination between stakeholders and communities. Existing national and global food initiatives were reviewed using a pedagogical framework to identify presence of these barriers to actions, together with strategies that aimed to avoid or diminish such barriers. The findings confirm that a pedagogical approach has potential to enhance the roles and capacities of food practitioners and provide support for government and community structures to achieve a common vision of healthy and sustainable urban food systems.