Redefining education about food traditions in Swedish home economics education: report from a lesson study

The syllabus for Home Economics in Sweden has a concrete culture perspective tied to cultural variations and food traditions (Skolverket 2011, 2016). Culture has been described as pivotal to how we socially understand the world around us (Burr 2003, Gerger 2009), which means that the world isn’t neutral to us but rather understood from one cultural perspective or another (Hastrup 2004). Research (Bohm 2016, Höijer 2013) has illustrated how food selected to be included in Home Economics education primarily is chosen by the teacher, and also that the teacher is embedded in the cultural and structural traditions that are (re)constructed in society and school. Education about food in Home Economics is contested in the sense that students and teachers’ cultural perspective are misaligned and students’ experiences rarely are taken as a starting point (Höijer 2013). So far there has been no research investigating how education about food traditions is realized, but experience suggests that it often entails baking traditional saffron buns in December or to speak about geographical regions rather than to investigate food as codes, images, values, experiences and ways of thinking that groups of people share. The main aim of the project was to develop Home Economic teachers competence in a Swedish municipality, the specific aim was to develop education about food traditions.

Between August of 2017 and January 2018 a competence development project was carried out in a large municipality near Stockholm. The project was planned as a combination between lectures and research in the form of a lesson study (Lewis 2002; Lewis, Perry & Murata 2006; Murata 2011). In the lesson study a specific lesson was planned by the whole group and carried out by one teacher, and observed by other teachers. Analysis and revision of the lesson was done by the whole group.