| 1. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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Absence, deviance and unattainable ideals : Discourses on vegetarianism in the Swedish school subject Home and Consumer Studies
- 2016
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Ingår i: Health Education Journal. - : Sage Publications. - 0017-8969 .- 1748-8176. ; 75:6, s. 676-688
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: This study aimed to describe Discourses on vegetarian food in the Swedish school subject Home and Consumer Studies. Design: The study involved the observation of naturally occurring classroom talk, with audio recording and in some cases video-taping. Setting: The study was conducted during Home and Consumer Studies lessons in five different northern Swedish schools. Method: Fifty-nine students and five teachers were observed, recorded and in some cases video-taped. The resulting data were analysed with a focus on big 'D' Discourses. Results: Results indicated that gendered Discourses of absence, deviance and unattainability restricted some students' access to vegetarian food. The absence of meat was constructed as simultaneously healthy and unhealthy, a lack of cultural familiarity with vegetarian cooking made finding recipes difficult and students perceived the loss of taste as very negative. The vegetarian was seen as deviant, with vegetarianism being conceptually equated with sickness. Access to meat-free food required a commitment to a vegetarian lifestyle, and this was seen as a sacrifice and as too much work, not only for the individual but also for others. Conclusion: To counteract the restricted access to vegetarian food, Home and Consumer Studies teachers can redesign activities in the subject with the help of critical food literacy. For example, cooking could focus on popular plant-based dishes instead of 'empty' vegetarian themes, all students could be allowed to share vegetarian dishes instead of reserving them for vegetarians, the possibly strict rules of vegetarianism could be relaxed for those who do not wish to commit to them and vegetarian food could be deliberately connected to strength and masculinity. However, this presupposes sufficient economic resources and ample food storage space.
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| 2. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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"Can we add a little sugar?" : The contradictory discourses around sweet foods in Swedish home economics
- 2023
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Ingår i: Pedagogy, Culture & Society. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1468-1366 .- 1747-5104.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sweet foods occupy an ambiguous position in many people’s diets, perhaps especially for children and adolescents. The twin expectation that they both covet and limit their intake can create a dilemma not only in the home, but also in the school subject Home Economics (HE), which among other themes has a focus on food and health. In this study, we explored how Discourses on sweet foods were formed, reproduced, and challenged during 26 lessons in northern Sweden. Overall, sweet foods were constructed as desirable but also as unhealthy, disgusting, and unnecessary. They were used as a form of capital where ownership, distribution, and fairness were important, and students could mark friendships by sharing and gifting. Conversely, they could also use sweet foods to police, ridicule, question, or punish each other. Conflicts could arise around less-than-perfect results and students could withhold sweet foods from each other as a form of social rejection. Vague limits to intake placed responsibility for intake on the students themselves. We suggest that a contextualisation of the social, cultural, and health aspects of sweet foods in HE might help students acquire a more holistic Discourse of sweet foods and mitigate their social weaponisation.
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| 3. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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'Don't give us an assignment where we have to use spinach!' : food choice and discourse in home and consumer studies
- 2016
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Ingår i: International Journal of Consumer Studies. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1470-6423 .- 1470-6431. ; 40:1, s. 57-65
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of the study was to describe classroom Discourses about vegetables during the planning, cooking, eating and evaluation of meals in the Swedish school subject Home and Consumer Studies. Fifty-nine students and five teachers were recruited from five northern Swedish villages and towns, and then observed, recorded and in some cases video-taped during lessons that took place between 2010 and 2012. Based on 56 instances of talk about vegetables, four Discourses were identified and related to the three aspects of Belasco's culinary triangle of contradictions: identity, responsibility and convenience. The results indicated that the identity-based sensory and cultural Discourses sometimes clashed with the more responsibility-oriented health and evaluation Discourses. The health Discourse was only used when there was an element of evaluation, with assignments connected to grades. In all other cases, the sensory and cultural Discourses guided vegetable use. Sometimes different sensory or cultural assumptions could clash with each other, for example when the teacher insisted on the use of a specific recipe regardless of a student's taste preferences. Since these preferences did not always harmonize with curricular demands for responsibility, there might be a risk of basing grades on aspects of students' identity. Alternatively, students might feel constrained to argue against their own identity in order to be favourably evaluated. Then again, if teachers always bow to student tastes, this limits their chances of learning about food and physical health. Viewing the dilemma through the lens of the culinary triangle of contradictions may help teachers and researchers develop teaching methods that take all aspects of food choice into account.
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| 4. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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"He just has to like ham" : the centrality of meat in home and consumer studies
- 2015
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Ingår i: Appetite. - : Elsevier. - 0195-6663 .- 1095-8304. ; 95, s. 101-112
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study aimed to describe Discourses on meat in the school subject Home and Consumer Studies in five different northern Swedish schools. Fifty-nine students and five teachers from five different schools were recorded and in some cases video-taped during lessons. Results indicate that meat was seen as central to nutritional health, sensory experience, culture and social relationships. This positive view was challenged by an alternative Discourse where meat was threatening to health, sensory experience and psychological comfort, but this was not strong enough to affect centrality. Even when participants sought to promote the health advantages of reducing meat consumption, the dominant centrality Discourse was strengthened. This implies that the possible tension between physical and psychosocial/emotional health can make the benefits of a reduction difficult both to convey and accept. A form of critical food literacy may help teachers deconstruct the arbitrary power of the centrality Discourse, but it may also strengthen meat-eater identities because the social norms that guide food choice become salient. A redesign of Discourses might facilitate a reduction in meat consumption, but such a paradigm shift is dependent on the development of society as a whole, and can only be briefly touched upon within the limited timeframes and resources of Home and Consumer Studies.
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| 5. |
- Bohm, Ingela, 1975-
(författare)
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"We're made of meat, so why should we eat vegetables?" : food discourses in the school subject home and consumer studies
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Food has many different functions. On a physical level, it is needed to survive and to maintain health, but it also has many social, psychological, and emotional meanings. For example, food is used to build relationships, to mark hierarchies, to celebrate holidays, and to influence mood and self-image. Different foods have different cultural meanings, and people are socialized from an early age to recognize and utilize their symbolic value.One arena where food occupies a central position is the Swedish school subject Home and Consumer Studies (HCS), which focuses on both the physical and the psychosocial dimensions of food-related health. Since these dimensions are not always compatible, the aim of this dissertation was to explore how students and teachers of HCS use big 'D' Discourses to talk about and handle food, with a special focus on vegetables, meat, vegetarian food, and sweet foods.Methods: Fifty-nine students and five teachers were observed, recorded, and in some cases video-taped. Participants’ talk about vegetables, meat, vegetarian food, and sweet foods was transcribed verbatim and analysed for big 'D' Discourses.Results: Students mostly based their choice of vegetables on sensory and cultural Discourses. Some vegetables were mandatory and others were optional, depending on whether or not they were part of a recipe or a cultural tradition. The health Discourse was only used if a specific assignment demanded it, and was closely tied to the evaluation Discourse.Contrary to the sometimes optional status of vegetables, meat was seen as central in the sensory, cultural, health, and social Discourses. Therefore the reduction of meat could be problematic. It was regarded as simultaneously healthy and unhealthy, and it could elicit disgust, but whenever participants talked about decreasing meat consumption, its centrality was invoked as a counterargument.As an extension of this, vegetarian food was seen as 'empty', deviant, and an unattainable ideal. Access to vegetarian food was limited for meat-eaters, and vegetarians were othered in both positive and negative ways. When vegetarian food was cooked during lessons, it was constructed as something out of the ordinary.Sweet foods could be viewed as a treasure, as something dangerous and disgusting, or as an unnecessary extra. Home-made varieties were seen as superior. Sweet foods gave social status to both students and teachers, and they could be traded or given away to mark relationships and hierarchies, but also withheld and used to police others.Conclusion: In summary, two powerful potential opposites met in the HCS classroom: the Discourses of normality (sensory, cultural, and social Discourses), and the Discourses of responsibility (health and evaluation). Normality could make physically healthy food choices difficult because of participants' social identity, the conflicted health Discourse, and too-strict ideals. On the other hand, some people were excluded from normality itself, notably vegetarians, who were seen as deviant eaters, and teachers, who had to balance state-regulated goals in HCS against local norms.To counteract such problems, teachers can 1) focus on sensory experiences, experimental cooking methods, and already popular foods, 2) challenge normality by the way they speak about and handle different types of food, 3) make cooking and eating more communal and socially inclusive, 4) explore the psychosocial dimension of health on the same level as the physical dimension, and 5) make sure they do not grade students' cultural backgrounds, social identities, or taste preferences. This might go some way towards empowering students to make informed choices about food and health. However, scant resources of things like time, money, and equipment limit what can be achieved in the subject.
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| 6. |
- Bohm, Ingela, et al.
(författare)
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“You’re a sugar addict!” : Sweetness and Health in Home and Consumer Studies
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Because of possible contradictions between physical and psychosocial health, sweet foods can create social tension in home economics. To explore this tension, we observed 59 students and five teachers during 26 lessons. Discourse analysis of naturally occurring talk indicated four big ‘D’ Discourses about sweet foods, namely the coveted treasure, the superiority of the homemade, danger/disgust and the unnecessary extra. The treasure Discourse could spark conflict because of demands on extreme fairness or perfect results. It could also be used to mark both good and bad relationships. The unnecessary extra, home-made and danger/disgust Discourses could be used to stigmatize others and mark superiority. There was also a risk of demonizing sweet foods without offering realistic alternatives. To avoid this, teachers can a) tone down the focus on results, b) make sure students share their sweet foods with everyone, c) balance the negative aspects of simple carbohydrates with a more holistic, psychosocial view of the role of sugar in the human diet, and d) give the students concrete tools to create healthy snacks.
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| 7. |
- Haapaniemi, Janni, et al.
(författare)
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NAVIGATING DIGITAL CHALLENGES TOGETHER: COOPERATION OF RESEARCHERS AND SUBJECT TEACHERS
- 2023
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Ingår i: INTED2023 Proceedings: 17th International Technology, Education and Development Conference, Valencia, Spain. 6-8 March, 2023.. - : IATED. - 2340-1079. - 9788409490264
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Home economics (HE) is a practice-oriented school subject which expects students' active involvement and where students deal with topics strongly intertwined with everyday life themes. Although, with the digital era within the last decades, new challenges have arised - e.g. how to implement digital technology into subject teaching in a pedagogically meaningful way? Moreover, the COVID-19 lock-down showed that in many countries especially home economics teachers faced new challenges when trying to give independent learning tasks for students at home. It was difficult to instruct as well as to evaluate students' food preparation skills from a distance, and learning skills related to sensory evaluation was practically impossible. In this article, we share the experiences of a joint Erasmus+ strategic collaboration project NAVI-HED (Navigating through digital challenges in Home economics education) that united university researchers and expert practitioners, working as HE subject teachers, from four Nordic-Baltic countries. As an innovation, expert practitioners from each partner country (n=12) were included through the Delphi technique for mapping good practices and ideas that worked well during the lockdown period. The expert teachers were included into the project in four rounds composing the methodology in this project: (1) describing their practices; (2) voting for the most promising practices; (3) developing the ideas further with the researchers, making them more detailed and versatile; (4) evaluating the final material. The product of this project is a booklet of pedagogical ideas from practitioner to practitioner, that supports students’ independent learning in HE distance education. Including the expert practitioners in several rounds of the development enabled to raise the quality and workability of the material. However, there were also challenges between different parties: e.g. having different expectations for the details of the content or the form of presenting the final material. We hereby open the viewpoints of both parties on the methodology and cooperation process as well as share our experiences in using Delphi technique for empowering the process and the project results through know-how of the expert practitioners.
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