Practice and Agency for Youth
Food Safety Management in Central Elementary School Canteens in Region Three, Philippines
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lea Milan
In this study, the researcher would like to explore how food safety was being managed in Central Elementary School Canteens’ in Region 3 and evaluate the performance of their existing food safety management. The researcher’s end goal was to provide information and data on how central elementary schools in the region respond to food safety and to identify gaps and opportunities for improvements on food safety management in school canteens. It utilized survey questionnaires, interview guide questions and validated knowledge test on food safety as tools in data gathering. With this study, school administrators, food service operators, policy making bodies, students, educators and future researchers would all be benefited. Generally, each of them would be able to realize their roles and responsibilities in food safety management. Moreso, they would also be enlightened on the importance of having a food safety management system in place. For the policy making bodies, this study would generate data and information on the existing food safety management in the Central Elementary School Canteens of Region 3 that could serve as their reference in enhancing and strengthening the existing national policies and guidelines pertaining to food safety in the schools, for the welfare of the pupils. This could also support other national development efforts to create awareness on food safety and augment prevention and/or reduction of food borne illness and food poisoning outbreaks especially to school children.
Changing Lives through Food and Farming: Agency, Learning, and Identity Construction in the American Youth Food Justice Movement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Morten Kromann Nielsen
The paper discusses findings from a doctoral research project on the interplay between pedagogical practice and agency, learning and identity formation in the American youth food justice movement. The theoretical framework draws on educational anthropology and critical youth studies the intersection between critical pedagogy and environmental education. The research questions focus on the impact of the farming framework for the educational activities with a special interest in the relation between a staff role design management perspective and a youth agency, learning and identity construction perspective. The methodology in the study is an anthropological case study of a specific Californian youth food justice program with a long term fieldwork with participant observations and ethnographic interviews as main methods. The main finding is the way the pedagogical practice is designed to use the food and farming framework as a pedagogical resource for two main agendas – job training and food justice. A central element is the way staff and youth roles are dynamically constructed. As staff roles change from being employers to mentors, partners and friends the youth learning process changes from being primarily focused on skills and work ethic to become more identity formative, expressed as increased self-confidence and ‘life changing’. The analysis points to the youth food justice movement as a context where central criticisms directed towards both critical pedagogy and American environmental education can be met as well as these informal educational contexts as having big potentials for democratic participation by supporting marginalized youth in becoming agents of change.
