In 2023, Auckland Council's Sustainable Schools Team (SST) piloted a project called "Mana Ora: Students Decarbonising Schools." The aim was that students, with guidance and support from teachers and SST, would plan and implement climate and sustainability action projects linked to decarbonisation within their schools. Eighteen Mana Ora…

Allergic reactions to allergenic foods can pose a lethal threat to children with food allergies. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of using behavioral skills training (BST) plus in situ training (IST) to teach safety responses to children. However, there has not been an evaluation of using BST to teach food safety to children…

This paper explores the experience of researching food in schools. Food is personal. It is an ingested symbol of culture, family, tradition, ethnicity… What does this mean as a researcher? How do we navigate food relationships? How is this relationship shaped by the rules of the school? This paper examines how I went about doing food research in…

This paper discusses the use of mapping as part of an ethnographic research project exploring food experiences in primary schools. Whilst the main data collection instrument was participant observation, the project made use of a creative social mapping activity. Towards the end of fieldwork, children were asked to draw maps of the food spaces at…

The so-called "animal turn", having been on the agenda for around 15 years in the humanities and social sciences, is gaining force also in the educational sciences, typically with an orientation toward posthumanist ontologies. One particular space where educational "more-than-human" relations are debated is the field of…

Considering over one-third of the United States' population is now considered obese, childhood obesity has become a highlighted public health concern. Educators and health professionals have spent a significant amount of time examining how to approach the obesity epidemic, specifically childhood obesity, yet there is still no clear solution. An…

Policy makers in the UK are trying to improve school meals, by focusing on eating well. This article explores the way policies are framed by academic performance and health as a reason for providing school lunches. Using Nussbaum's capability approach we argue that the purpose of schooling should be to provide young people with the ability to lead…

This paper brings together sociocultural theorising about language and literacy learning, as well as work which explores ethical issues associated with young children's participation in research in order to interrogate unplanned discussions between researchers and young children about research writing. The data discussed were derived from two…

The William Penn Foundation launched Philadelphia's Informal Learning Initiative (ILI) to support the development of literacy-rich programming for families with children aged 3 to 9. The initiative was designed as a network of partnerships in which a cultural organization--usually a museum--paired with one or more, community-based organizations…

This paper examines the discourse on school meals, as evidence suggests that political agendas feed into policy making. The paper fills a void by proposing new insights into how school meals could be reformed, following reflections from a doctoral study and a review of the changing narrative on school food in England. Recommendations include…

This article explores the planning and implementation process for a community partnership school for a historically low-performing elementary school using an asset-based community development approach. We offer insights into the community needs assessment process that enabled four key community partners to identify needs and projects for the…

Multicultural Days are a regular event in Australian schools. While they are viewed as a vehicle for cultural inclusion and strengthening community, they have long been critiqued for their avoidance of a more critical engagement with deeper issues around cultural complexity. The intent of this paper is not simply to add to this critique but to…

This paper examines students' food perspectives in three rapidly diversifying contemporary contexts: a university setting in Kigali, Rwanda where students help to prepare Chinese dumplings; a school garden and canteen in Nairobi, Kenya where students jostle for bowls of beans and rice; and a fast-food restaurant in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where…

The National School Lunch Program's (NSLP) original goal was to help students in need, but policy changes in the past decade have made students from middle-income and upper-income families eligible for federally funded school meals. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an expansion of the NSLP enacted in 2010, effectively created a federal…

Food insecurity is a threat to student success on college campuses in the United States. It has the potential to impact academics, wellness, and behavior--all factors that have bearing on student retention and graduation rates. This article reviews the literature on food insecurity among college students, utilizing research on hunger and…