Browsing by Author "Hyvönen, Emilia"

Previous studies have found that sustainability education leaves room for interpretation. Food has been found to be a good means to increase pupils’ understanding of sustainable development. Food as a topic is part of the content of many school subjects and thus it connects the whole school community. School dining has also been seen to have potential as a teaching resource with idle opportunities. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the implementation of sustainability education and school dining in interdisciplinary cooperation. This study aims to find out how sustainability education is understood, how food and school dining could be used more extensively as part of sustainability education across disciplines, and what opportunities and challenges can be seen in interdisciplinary collaboration. A qualitative research strategy was used to analyse the topic. The data consists of theme interviews with nine subject teachers and five food service managers. The data was analysed using thematic analysis, qualitative content analysis and the concept of accounts. Sustainability education was interpreted from the aspects of transversal competence, phenomenal learning and value and attitude education. Food was seen to be a versatile tool and theme to approach the aspects of sustainable development. Also challenges were seen in sustainability education, which were explained to be caused by lack of time and educational material and by the age of pupils and the interpretability of sustainability education. Interviewees saw interdisciplinary cooperation as a useful way of sharing ideas and maintaining a good atmosphere in the school community. Challenges were also seen in it, which were explained by the lack of time, separate plans, and by the challenges in personal chemistry. Educational opportunities were seen in school dining, which interviewees saw could be used through cooperation and by adding more time and resources to it. Interdisciplinary cooperation and the use of food in sustainability education seems to require further development and more time and materials to support the work in schools. A review of the three-level model of food sense from the perspective of the goals of sustainability education shows that it can also be used as a pedagogical model. Further research is needed to find out if the pedagogical model can work also in action.