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This article explores foods talked about and chosen in the education of Swedish Home Economics as a relationship between structural processes and agency. Three data sets from observations and focus group interviews with teachers and students were analyzed for food classifications. These were related to a culinary triangle of contradictions, showing factors of identity, convenience and responsibility. Results show that foods talked about and chosen by teachers and students were reflections of dominant cultural values. Results also indicate that teachers had more agency than students, but that the choices they made were framed by educational visions and cultural values.

Education about and for the home has been part of the Swedish education system for over one hundred years, and Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) has been compulsory for all pupils since the common nine-year school system was introduced in 1962. For all this time food has been a central theme, however we know very little of what food means in this context. The aim of this thesis was to seek to understand the construction of food in HCS. This thesis consists of four papers that explore food in HCS from the perspective of teachers and pupils, the role of the classroom and how food in HCS is part of a larger cultural context. Observations and focus group interviews were used to collect data. The material consists of field notes from 13 days in three HCS classrooms and transcripts of focus group interviews with 25 HCS-teachers and 20 pupils. The analytical methods used were based on social constructionist assumptions which were supplemented by theories on culture, space and spatiality. Results show that teachers constructed both pupils’ homes and society in general as deficient in relation to health. Their role, as public health commissioners, was to educate pupils about food on issues such as health and sustainability. Pupils relied on their personal experiences from home to make sense of food in HCS. To them, home was the authentic place for food where everyday life took place. Food in HCS on the other hand was de-authenticised and sometimes hard to make sense of. This meant that there was a limited shared understanding between pupils and teachers. A spatial analysis of the HCS classroom as a learning space for food showed that past ideologies and traditional power geometries were built into the physical layout and social relationships constructing the room. Food in HCS was found to reflect cultural values of the surrounding society at the same time as a specific HCS cuisine emerged. Food in HCS was thus constructed as contested in interaction between food, pupils, teachers and classroom as well as in relation to a wider context. 

Studies on children’s learning about food commonly focus on socialisation within a temporal perspective taking an interest in linear and developmental issues, where the home is assumed as the primary place for learning food skills that should be deepened through education in Home Economics. Home Economics concern topics that are related to our private domestic life but education takes place in the public setting of school which indicates that here is a tension built into the subject. This article explores how a classroom can be understood and explored beyond a temporal framework when studying children’s learning about food in Home Economics. Observations from three Swedish Home Economics classrooms are explored with a spatial perspective concerning material, network and power aspects. A spatial perspective makes the challenges of Home Economics visible which can aid in further development of professional methods for teaching about food.

Food and home are central issues in the Home Economics curriculum. The aim of the present paper was to explore how Home Economics teachers make sense of and manage being teachers in this particular subject and how they talk about food and home. This was achieved by conducting four focus groups with 25 participants, 23 women and two men, all with experience from working as Home Economics teachers. Participants were recruited from all over Sweden through emails. The data analysis was conducted in three steps and was guided by social constructionist theory. The main findings were the themes of Home Economics as food with a purpose, teachers with a public health commission, the fostering teacher, tangible cooking and the deficient home. The results show that Home Economics is constructed as a site for 'proper knowledge' about food in relation to a 'deficient home'. Food in Home Economics was thus constructed as having a purpose.

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify a way of thinking about what happens in the Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) classroom that can work as a professional empowering tool for teachers.

Data was collected with participant observations in HCS classrooms in two Swedish schools. Observations were made in 22 HCS classes. There was totally 104 boys and 134 girls observed, a total of 33 hours was spent in the classrooms. Detailed field notes were taken during the observations, recording the activities in the classroom. In a three step process, the field notes were developed into a biographical text. This material was read through several times and themes were identified and sorted with the help of a text analysis software, groups of examples within each theme were created and extractions were made. A detailed analysis framed by the philosophies of Dewey and Vygotsky followed, employing concepts of meaning, transaction, habituation, mediating tools, appropriation and internalization. The analysis suggests that students both explore and express meaning as they cook together in the classroom and this can be utilized as a way of thinking about the activities in the classroom. To be able to teach for e.g. sustainability, it is important to understand the students’ meaning-making processes in the HCS classroom as the students’ exploring can be guided by the teacher to further develop knowledge within required areas.