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Indigenous student completion rates remain very low relative to non-Indigenous students. Some universities have higher Indigenous student completion rates than the national average but research-based evidence of these universities as 'success models' is limited. Drawing on findings from interviews with Indigenous university graduates and staff as part of a National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) funded research project, this paper discusses findings relating to one success factor that supports Indigenous student completions: Indigenous centres/units as key places to build a sense of connection and belonging for Indigenous students. The paper discusses the importance of Indigenous centres/units in providing a space where Indigenous students can connect with each other, with staff, and with their own cultural identities. The paper then discusses the development of strategies that can be adopted by all universities across Australia to strengthen and improve the completion rates of Indigenous students.

Research into pedagogical approaches used in early years' nature education, more specifically European and UK forest schools, remains according to Leather, 'undertheorised.' In a similar situation in Australia, the bush kindergarten programmes (referred to as 'bush kinders'), have had limited research attention. Influenced by European and UK forest school approaches, bush kinders are a recent development in Australian early years nature education. We discuss an ethnographic study where teaching and learning in three bush kinder settings was observed, each with different pedagogical approaches. The paper reports one main finding, where a wide range of pedagogical approaches were observed across the different bush kinder sites. To theoretically frame these pedagogical approaches, our analysis builds on Edwards' notion of play-based learning, along with a model of inquiry-based teaching proposed by Furtak et al. Using ethnographic methods we draw on fieldwork data and research literature to analyse bush kinder pedagogies. The paper contributes to the conceptualisation of pedagogy in early childhood nature and bush kinder programmes.

Teachers' self-confidence plays an important role in the successful delivery of school food and nutrition education. Their opinions of ways of improving their teaching confidence provide important insights into improving teacher support systems. This paper presents qualitative data from part of an online survey that explored Australian secondary school teachers' perceptions of their confidence in teaching food and nutrition subjects. The online survey was conducted from May to October 2017. Out of 183 teachers who completed the survey, 165 provided written comments about ways to improve teachers' confidence in teaching food and nutrition subjects. These textual data were uploaded to NVivo data management software and analysed using the template analysis technique. The suggested ways to improve the teachers' confidence included: (i) provision of more professional development opportunities, (ii) ensuring teachers possess adequate food and nutrition-related knowledge and skills, (iii) provision of more resources and time for teaching and learning, (iv) being informed about up-to-date food and nutrition-related trends, and (v) improvements in the status of food and nutrition subjects within schools. Policymakers and school administrators should see how they can facilitate these suggestions to establish more favourable teacher support systems.

As the number of jobs in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) workforce grows exponentially, there has never been a more important time to provide students with real-world learning opportunities that have 21st century implications. Measuring things that matter is a fundamental skill that formulates the backbone of many concepts across all STEM disciplines. Even though measurement underpins countless situations in everyday life, the concept is rarely taught in a manner that connects to the broader community. Unfortunately, when measurement is taught without context, students may struggle to make sense of the numbers and units involved (Farmer et al., 2015). The science innovation discussed in this paper, achieves authenticity by adding personal value to developing measurement as a skill. The overarching focus is to engage students through the study of how wasting perishable food links to plastic wastage. Contextualising the innovation and taking measurements of an everyday issue aligns students' personal experiences with perishable food freshness (Sengupta et al., 2019). Considering the broader community also ties the end users to measurements made, data collected, and research conducted. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how students may develop measurement skills when teaching science through the consideration of a prevalent community issue.

There has been a recent surge in the popularity of school gardening programmes with different models claiming to address learning outcomes within the curriculum. For example, the 'kitchen garden' concept has had a rapid uptake across many Australian schools, promoted by both government curriculum support documents, and private organisations. Research points to the 'use' of school gardens as an initiative that predominantly draws on discourses of health, wellbeing and sustainability -- sometimes together but also often quite separately. Despite the rapid uptake of gardening initiatives in schools, and the explicit mention of 'gardening' in State based variations of the Australian National Curriculum, we know very little about how school gardens are being conceptualised by Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers as part of their teaching -- either in primary or secondary contexts. This paper utilises data from a larger study which investigated how 24 generalist primary and secondary specialist HPE teachers talked about 'environmental health' within Health and Physical Education. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first it examines the range of discourses, that is, the different meanings and values, the teachers in the study associated with gardening as a practice expected of environmentally healthy citizens. Second, we draw on material and embodied knowledge to demonstrate how the very diverse ways the teachers talked about gardening, provide 'conditions of possibility' for thinking critically about gardening, and how school gardens might be positioned within the context of HPE.

Chinese international students represent a significant social, economic and cultural force in Australian society. Research has demonstrated that Chinese students enrich Australia not only through their economic contribution, but through soft diplomacy and cultural links. Despite this, and the recent rapid growth in the number of Chinese international students to the country, only a small number of studies have focused specifically on understanding the health and employment experiences of Chinese students in Australia. This paper examines interview data from an ethnographic study involving ten Chinese international students pursuing higher education in New South Wales, Australia. Topics concerning work rights and exploitation, migration, and cultural differences are touched upon within their health and employment experiences. This paper provides insights for those working with Chinese international students in the areas of health education and promotion, diversity and inclusion, employment and mobility studies. The results contribute to broader insights into the inward/outward mobility of higher education students and Australia's "National Strategy for International Education 2025."

Anthropocentric thinking produces fractured ecological perspectives that perpetuate destructive, wasteful behaviours. Recognition of the relational entanglements of humans and more-than-humans, particularly through our everyday visceral encounters with food, may be able to encourage ethical ecological thinking and practices that lay the foundations for more sustainable lifestyles. This paper explores possible ways embodied, convivial and experimental interactions with food waste and its avoidance -- along with the various assemblages through which it both acts and is enacted -- can support recognition of the entangled relations in which humans and more-than-humans co-become. Excess food, its prevention, reuse and disposal, requires management through intimate human bodily engagements where the very vitality of food is inescapable. The affective force of these necessarily multispecies interactions --which can prompt desires for both attachment and detachment and manifest in a myriad of forms of togetherness -- exposes mutual vulnerabilities in living together. Through analysis of ethnographic data gathered from 38 food-producing gardeners and Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) participants in the Australian Capital Territory, this paper maps out how experimental, playful interactions with leftover, surplus or wasted food could contribute to the development of the skills and competencies necessary for adapting to our contingent futures. Encounters with excess food are shown to be capable of assisting in training sensitivities to become attuned and responsive to our more-than-human entanglements and mutual vulnerabilities. This responsive attunement can induce and support ethico-political beliefs and practices that have the potential to disrupt anthropocentric thinking.

The development of healthy eating habits in adolescents is challenging. Resultantly, health educators are turning to digital devices to engage young people in nutrition education. This paper focuses on the development and evaluation of a computer game (Test Game B) to support healthier food choices. Test Game B was developed at an Australian university and trialled with 72 tertiary student volunteers along with a control game (Control Game A). Both games provided information related to the progression of food along the digestive tract with knowledge of digestion, nutrition, a healthy diet and attitudes to food choice measured before and after game use. Change in these indicator variables assessed game effectiveness. The study found that the transformational aspects of problem-based learning within a digital context can support healthier food choices in young people, whilst pre-service health education teachers may require learning in food digestion to support nutrition education in schools.

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 understand why such forms of lazy multiculturalism persist in schools. Taking an ethnographic orientation to the field of multicultural education, it examines one school's approach to the Multicultural Day. The paper considers how, despite engaging in professional learning designed to challenge established practice in this area, teachers resisted the intellectual task of doing diversity differently. The ethnographic methods used in the study not only allowed for an examination of the practices this school engaged in, they drew attention to how teachers might modify their practice and develop a deeper understanding of cultural complexity.

There has been a recent surge of interest in cooking skills in a diverse range of fields, such as health, education and public policy. There appears to be an assumption that cooking skills are in decline and that this is having an adverse impact on individual health and well-being, and family wholesomeness. The problematisation of cooking skills is not new, and can be seen in a number of historical developments that have specified particular pedagogies about food and eating. The purpose of this paper is to examine pedagogies on cooking skills and the importance accorded them. The paper draws on Foucault's work on governmentality. By using examples from the USA, UK and Australia, the paper demonstrates the ways that authoritative discourses on the know how and the know what about food and cooking--called here "savoir fare"--are developed and promulgated. These discourses, and the moral panics in which they are embedded, require individuals to make choices about what to cook and how to cook, and in doing so establish moral pedagogies concerning good and bad cooking. The development of food literacy programmes, which see cooking skills as life skills, further extends the obligations to "cook properly" to wider populations. The emphasis on cooking knowledge and skills has ushered in new forms of government, firstly, through a relationship between expertise and politics which is readily visible through the authority that underpins the need to develop skills in food provisioning and preparation; secondly, through a new pluralisation of "social" technologies which invites a range of private-public interest through, for example, television cooking programmes featuring cooking skills, albeit it set in a particular milieu of entertainment; and lastly, through a new specification of the subject can be seen in the formation of a choosing subject, one which has to problematise food choice in relation to expert advice and guidance. A governmentality focus shows that as discourses develop about what is the correct level of "savoir fare", new discursive subject positions are opened up. Armed with the understanding of what is considered expert-endorsed acceptable food knowledge, subjects judge themselves through self-surveillance. The result is a powerful food and family morality that is both disciplined and disciplinary.

This paper explores the way learning to cook remains important for the maintenance of "ethnic" food traditions and how sharing food knowledge plays a role in intercultural exchanges. Ethnographic data from an ongoing study in Melbourne is presented to highlight how, in everyday practices, both tradition and innovation are involved in learning experiences related to cooking. Using an everyday multiculturalism perspective, the study was designed to investigate the resilience of ethnic food cultures in the face of increasing industrialisation in global food systems. In this paper, I focus in particular on the interplay between tradition and innovation in everyday settings by drawing closely on three women's accounts of cooking and learning. The women remain attached to the food traditions they learned by observing and taking part in daily routines of meal preparation and they stress that many of these practices need to be preserved. At the same time, their accounts reveal how everyday settings can be considered as "pedagogical spaces" where opportunities for innovation arise and new knowledge about food and cooking can be acquired. Families, schools, travel, workplaces and neighbourhood networks emerged as sites where traditional food knowledge can be shared and new skills developed. The paper contributes to our understanding of food pedagogies by highlighting the dynamic relationship between tradition and innovation in everyday, mundane encounters and exchanges in multicultural societies.

Over the past decade the issue of food and in particular, food consumed within schools has come to encapsulate a broad range of concerns regarding children and young people's health and wellbeing. In Australia, the UK and more recently the USA, attempts to ameliorate a range of public health concerns have provided the impetus for an unprecedented proliferation of school food initiatives and legislative reforms governing the types of foods that may or may not be provided within schools. While academic enquiry in this area has largely focussed upon attempts to govern children, recent initiatives in the UK and Australia have begun to target parents in their attempts to promote healthy food practices. In this paper we interrogate the ways in which parents, or more specifically, mothers are positioned in relation to school food discourses in Australia and in the UK and suggest that school food has become a site through which an array of pedagogical opportunities are opened up to invoke particular subject positions premised on normative views of affective middle class motherhood. In short, we seek to explore the means through which mothers come to be regarded as legitimate targets of school food pedagogy. The paper draws on empirical data from Australia and the UK to compare a range of pedagogic techniques employed in the two countries. Drawing on governmentality studies we explore how school food pedagogies seek to regulate mothers and their children's food related choices. We consider school lunches and the various techniques that have been deployed in both countries to consider the moralising work that takes place around food and motherhood. (Contains 1 figure and 1 footnote.)

The "ecologisation" of Australian primary schools brings new opportunities for curriculum expansion and renewal for sustainability education. My contribution to the broader discussion of place, geography, sustainability and literacy stems from an interest in how children are brought into contact with sustainability discourses via sensory and embodied learning in local school ground landscapes. In this paper I am interested in identifying the emergent pedagogies and new literacies that inform and shape the implementation of sustainability curriculum. The paper draws on research that uses theories of place inhabitation, relationships to food, place ecologies, and place-based pedagogies to examine the educational value of food gardens and related environmental and health initiatives in primary (elementary) schooling in Australia. Using research data from two schools, the paper illustrates how school ground settings, curriculum and pedagogy generate spatial, temporal and geographical literacies that support children's meaning making. These multimodal literacies are vital curriculum ingredients that effectively educate for sustainability.

Children's gardening programs have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years. An Australian environmental education non-profit organization implemented a program, entitled Multicultural Schools Gardens, in disadvantaged (low-income) schools that used food gardening as a focus for implementing a culturally-focused environmental education program. While the program included the well documented educational, social, and health benefits of growing food, gardening and cooking were also utilized as leverage in learning about culture, language (English as a Second Language), and environment. Alongside the program's implementation, a combined methods research approach was applied to gauge children's learning experiences as program participants. Part of this process involved children researching their own practice, accompanied by researcher interviews and observations with students and teachers. This paper presents an inquiry into practice involving one site, revealing how a culturally diverse school with a high proportion of migrant and refugee families created an engaging garden space. This space led to a strong sense of belonging among students who were formerly dislodged from their birthplaces, together with providing opportunities for learning English language and forming connections to the local environment. The paper provides food for thought with respect to the potential for children's gardening to transcend language and cultural differences. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)

This paper asks what translanguaging could start to look like if it incorporated an expanded version of language and questioned not only to the borders between languages but also the borders between semiotic modes. Developing the idea of spatial repertoires and assemblages, and looking at data from a Bangladeshi-owned corner shop, this paper suggests on the one hand that it is important to include a wide range of semiotic possibilities in any analysis. On the other hand, however, we cannot merely add more semiotic items to our translinguistic inventories, but need instead to seek out a way of grasping the relationships among a range of forms of semiosis. The notion of assemblages allows for an understanding of how different trajectories of people, semiotic resources and objects meet at particular moments and places, and thus helps us to see the importance of things, the consequences of the body, and the significance of place alongside the meanings of linguistic resources.

Australia's major state capitals are surrounded by highly productive food bowls, which are an important source of fresh foods for their growing populations. These food producing biomes are a rich resource for investigating key themes related to Biomes and food security, one of two Year 9 units of study in the Australian Curriculum: Geography. This paper draws on case studies of Melbourne and Sydney to explore challenges to food production in Australia's city food bowls. These challenges include population growth, urban sprawl, water scarcity and the impacts of climate change. We explore the implications of these challenges for the food security of Australia's urban populations, and we highlight the potential for emerging research findings about the significance of these food producing biomes to engage students with key themes of the Year 9 Biomes and food security unit.

Notions of creativity are increasingly central to educational scholarship and policies, but few studies attend to the intersection between "Health and Physical Education" (H/PE) and "creativity." In this paper we explore the literature on creativity in education and identify how creativity is represented across a broad spectrum of enquiry yet limited in relation to specifically H/PE. Writing from an Australian context, we examine how the key ideas and propositions from the "Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education" and the "Critical and Creative Thinking" capability raise important questions regarding the social emergence of educative creative purpose and potential in H/PE. We outline the utility of a 'creative ecologies' conceptual framework to consider contemporary practices in H/PE, and apply this to two purposively selected resources; to showcase their contextual eminence for creative learning in H/PE pedagogy and practice. The first resource, "Phenomenom!," was funded by Horticultural Innovation Australia to develop food literacy and is linked to cross-curriculum learning outcomes. The second resource, "Fitter. Faster. Better," is a St Martin's Youth drama-arts performance where students were prompted to design and perform a fitness programme for adults. Utilising the creative ecologies framework we illustrate the complexity of interconnected creative processes in H/PE as a series of networked elements and cultural flows (policies, practices, products, process, material environments, and partnerships). This framework is then used to identify how the two educational resources exemplify and open up a socially creative practice in both H/PE and everyday life. Our theoretical developments offer new ways to identify, design and enact quality creative and contemporary socio-cultural H/PE curriculum within a broader creative ecology.

There is a widely held belief that sport participation inherently enhances health among youth. Such a perception often motivates parents to encourage children's initial and ongoing involvement in organised sport and physical activity. While sport certainly comprises an important vehicle for accruing physical activity, the sport environment may not necessarily enhance other health-related behaviours, including dietary practices. The literature identifies the influence of the physical environment in this regard, including the availability of energy-dense nutrient-poor foods in sport settings. In considering additional influences on children's nutrition in sporting contexts, the role of parents is less understood. This is the first paper to emerge from a larger qualitative study, in which the basis of the investigation was to explore parental influence in the junior Australian football context. The naturalistic manner of qualitative inquiry led to a number of unintended yet highly pertinent emergent themes, including the role of parents in maintaining and reinforcing some contentious dietary behaviours among children post weekend sport. Drawing on individual interviews and focus groups with parents, children and coaches (n = 102), this paper discusses the role of parents in reinforcing a "food-as-reward" culture in the junior Australian football setting. The findings indicate that while parents play a vital role in promoting good nutrition in the lead up to weekend sport, they also reinforce a culture that fosters unhealthy dietary practices in the post-game setting. This gives rise to the notion that we, in this paper, have coined the "binge-purge" paradox. This paper discusses the implications of this health issue in relation to the "sport for health" rhetoric, and in broader society and culture.

With the renewed emphasis on higher education as an agent for development and economic growth, Australia has joined other Western countries in contributing to increasing the intellectual workforce of Africa[1]. While Australia has provided scholarships to Africans for more than three decades, since 2005, the Australian Government has dramatically increased its commitment to invest in Africa's future by providing a series of development awards scholarships for Africans to advance their learning in priority areas including agriculture, food security, water and sanitation, public health, energy and resource management. These scholarships are the largest component of Australia's total aid to Africa. However, very little empirical research has been done to determine the impact of Australia Africa Long Term scholarship awards (AALT). This paper examines this new African intellectual workforce by presenting qualitative data from alumni engaging in this new flow of knowledge mobility. Experiences of public health graduates of Australia scholarship awards from Uganda and Mozambique will be discussed. Overall, we argue that that the Australia Africa scholarships program has a positive impact on alumni and is viewed favourably by Alumnis' employers and their alumni's families. However, there are many challenges and struggles which can impede alumnis' success in bringing forth the change they might envisage. Some of these factors include: finding a job at a suitable level, implementing their new knowledge, using their new skills and, generally, reintegrating into their home country (both socially and professionally).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present emergent findings from an evaluation of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG) Program showing that the program promoted appreciation of cultural diversity and inclusion of culturally diverse groups. Design/methodology/approach: The findings reported here are from the qualitative component of a mixed-method, nonrandomized, pre- and post-comparison evaluation study. Focus groups and interviews were held with school principals, teachers, program specialist staff, parents, volunteers and children at the program schools. Findings: In a culturally diverse school, the program enhanced the school's capacity to engage and include children and families from migrant backgrounds. In less diverse settings, the program provided opportunities for schools to teach children about cultural diversity. Research limitations/implications: Assessing the program's impact on multicultural education was not a specific objective of this study, rather these findings emerged as an unanticipated outcome during interviews and focus groups that explored participants' views on important changes to schools associated with the program. Thus, the quantitative component of the evaluation did not assess the extent of this program impact and further research is recommended. Practical implications: The program may have particular value in culturally diverse schools, providing benefits in terms of engagement of children and families and potentially, in the longer term, associated improvements in learning outcomes. Social implications: These findings suggest that the program can help to promote social equity and inclusion for culturally diverse groups. Originality/value: This paper highlights critical equity implications associated with school-based programs' capacity to include culturally and linguistically diverse groups.

Purpose: The Australian Dietary Guidelines support good health and disease prevention. Children with healthy eating habits established early in life have been shown to continue these habits into adulthood compared with those children who have poor eating habits in their younger years. The nutritional intake of many Australian children is not in accordance with the national guidelines. The reasons children make the food choices they do are unclear from the literature. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study used participatory action research methods to explore why primary school-aged children make the food choices that they do. A non-government primary school requested assistance in encouraging their children to make healthier choices from the school canteen menu. The authors gathered opinions from the children in two different ways; a group discussion during class and a "discovery day" that involved four class grades. The authors identified children's food preferences and food availability in canteens. The authors explored how the children perceived healthy foods, the importance of a healthy food environment and what criteria children use to decide what foods to buy. Findings: Children's food preferences were mostly for unhealthy foods, and these were readily available in the canteen. The perception about what foods were healthy was limited. Despite being asked to develop a "healthy" menu, the majority of choices made by the children were not healthy. Children described unhealthy choices as preferable because of taste of the food, if it was sugary, if it was quick to eat, available and cheap, the relationship of food and weather, the connection to health conditions and peer dominance. Practical Implications: This study suggests that children make their food choices based on simple concepts. The challenge lies around producing healthy options in collaboration with the school community that match the children's food choice criteria. Originality/Value: This paper provides a modern and inspiring whole school approach based on equity and empowerment of the children. Discovering why children make food choices from the children's perspective will help to present healthy options that will be more appealing for children. The methodology used to uncover why children make their food choices has also provided valuable insight into a study design that could be used to address other childhood research questions. The methodology offers an educative experience while gathering rich information directly from the children. This information can be used by the school to support children to have more control over their health and to develop behaviours to increase their health for the rest of their lives.

Purpose: Health literacy is a key international public health goal. Conceptualising health literacy as an asset highlights the importance of fostering a health literate youth for the benefit of future generations, yet research has predominantly focused on examining adults' and older adolescents' health literacy. This presents a gap for child-centred studies with younger populations. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a qualitative study that explored health literacy, in a nutrition context (i.e. nutrition literacy), from primary school children's perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: The study examined children's experiences in accessing, understanding and interacting with nutrition information. In doing so, the research employed a socio-ecological framework to understand facilitators and barriers that can influence children's nutrition literacy. Preadolescent boys and girls aged 11-12 years were invited to take part in the study. At the time of recruitment, students were attending one of three state government schools in a socioeconomically disadvantaged region of metropolitan South Australia. A series of focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 38 participants. Interview data were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic techniques. Findings: Children demonstrated that they accessed and interacted with a variety of sources of nutrition information. Nutrition understandings were derived from the home, school and media environments. Parents and teachers were cited as key influences on children's interactions with nutrition information and children particularly emphasised the trust placed in their teachers as health "experts." While the home and school environments emerged as potential settings to develop children's nutrition literacy skills, the children's narratives also alluded to potential barriers surrounding nutrition literacy. Originality/value: This study provides further insight into children's nutrition literacy. While functional nutrition literacy remains a fundamental starting point, children are interested in opportunities to develop more interactive skills, such as those related to cooking. Opportunities also exist to foster more critical competencies. This research thereby highlights the importance of more integrated strategies to promote nutrition literacy among this population group across multiple settings.

Purpose: Teachers disseminate food knowledge and skills in secondary school curricula that provide essential skills for a healthy life. The purpose of this paper is to explore Australian secondary school teachers' views of healthy eating and their sources of information in planning their food, nutrition and health curriculum. Design/methodology/approach: Secondary school teachers' perceptions were explored through semi-structured, in-depth interviews that were de-identified and transcribed verbatim. Codes were ascribed to sections of the transcripts and throughout the process of inductive thematic analysis. The teachers' responses were grouped into five main themes: approaches to teaching healthy eating, sources of food and nutrition information, curriculum planning, teaching goals and teacher career influences. Findings: The teachers were clear about the aims and importance of teaching healthy eating in an experiential curriculum. They reported that teaching healthy eating assists the health and well--being of adolescents and their families. The effectiveness of current teaching in Australian secondary schools may be compromised by the positioning of food, nutrition and health topics in two separate curriculum areas: technologies and health and physical education, and competing school priorities and resources that limit the students' exposures to food curricula. The teachers sourced food information from online websites, popular culture and social media. Their knowledge and views of healthy eating appeared to be associated with their interests, life experiences, education and employment histories. Practical implications: These findings can assist with health promotion and education policy development. They can assist the design of healthy eating curriculum approaches for secondary schools and professional development courses for teachers, which will foster healthy food habits for adolescents, and their families in the future. Originality/value: Secondary school teacher perceptions of the place of healthy eating in food, and nutrition curricula have been under examined.

Purpose: Schools are widely accepted as having the potential to make substantial contributions to promoting healthy eating habits in children and adolescents. This paper aims to present a case study from an Australian school of how a whole-school approach, planned and implemented through a health promoting school framework, can foster improved nutrition in schools by creating a supportive environment for healthy eating habits. Design/methodology/approach: A case study approach was used to investigate the influence of a health promoting school approach on improvements to nutrition in the school environment. Data were collected using in-depth interviews, student focus groups and documentary evidence, such as school planning documents and observations of health promoting school activities. Findings: This study illustrates how initiatives to promote a healthier school environment increased demand for nutritious food in the school community, which in turn impacted the supply of these foods at the school tuckshop. The study provides insight into the key factors that facilitated these changes in the school, both internally, in terms of organisational change processes within the school, and externally, through support from a health promotion agency. The study also illustrates the centrality of educational leadership in the school context, even in an area typically identified as a "health" issue. Originality/value: This paper presents qualitative research identifying organisational processes that instigate change in the provision of nutritious foods within the school environment.

Purpose: Food education in secondary schools can provide adolescents with essential food knowledge and skills required for healthy, independent living. The purpose of this paper is to identify food-related knowledge and skills that Australian consumers believe are required for all consumers, and to identify their demographic and psychographic associations based on two studies. Design/methodology/approach: Two online surveys were conducted in 2012 and 2014 in different samples of Australian consumers (n = 2,146 and 770, respectively), both drawn from a commercial research panel. Respondents rated their views on the importance of food knowledge and skills items as "essential" or "not essential" in the 2012 survey, or by rating their importance in the 2014 using five-point scales. Principal components analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis were used to group the different types of food knowledge and skills and identify their associations. Findings: In both surveys, "the effects of food on people's health" and "how to prepare food safely" were viewed as the most important knowledge and skills, and food production, food system and environmental items were the least important. Food knowledge and equality values were positively associated with the importance of Nutrition Knowledge and Practical Skills in both surveys. In addition, food mavenism was a positive predictor of Nutrition and Health Knowledge and The Food System in 2012 and female sex was positively associated with Practical Food Skills. Research limitations/implications: Most respondents believed that nutrition and health knowledge and practical food skills were more important than knowledge of food production, the food system or the environment. The findings suggest that psychological factors such as personal values, food knowledge and food mavenism may be more important influences over these perceptions than respondents' demographic characteristics. Originality/value: This research is novel as it explores consumers' views about the food knowledge and skills that all consumers need to be healthy and independent, and has important implications for food education, particularly in secondary schools. In addition, it assessed consumers' views at two different time points, two years apart and, thus, provides evidence for stability of these views.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the sustainability of the food culture at Deakin University and to determine what the barriers to increasing the sustainability of food on the Burwood campus may be. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey of staff and students from the Faculty of Health at the Burwood campus of Deakin University (n = 697) was undertaken. The survey included questions relating to eating habits on campus, views on the current food culture, food security, food disposal, visions for the future and demographic information. In addition, a short paper-based survey was developed for the ten food outlets on campus. Findings: The results show that although sustainability considerations are important to staff and students, cost is the main issue and is a significant barrier to the development of a more sustainable food culture. It is also a significant barrier to staff and students making healthy choices when it comes to the purchase of food on campus. However, sustainable food initiatives such as community gardens could help alleviate this barrier and also contribute to improving student engagement. Research limitations/implications: The online survey was limited to the Faculty of Health, and, therefore, a potential bias exists towards individuals who may have an interest in health. This should be considered when interpreting the results. Originality/value: This research demonstrates that although cost may be a barrier to universities improving the sustainability of their food culture, there are other ways in which universities can create an environment that embraces sustainable food production to benefit both the environment and the university community.

As environmental changes become a significant societal issue, elementary science curricula need to develop students' understanding about the key concepts of energy and climate change. For teachers, developing quality learning experiences involves establishing what their students' prior understanding about energy and climate change are. A survey was developed to explore what elementary students know and understand about renewable and non-renewable sources of energy and their relationship to climate change issues. The findings from this survey are reported in this paper.

Project work and work placements can help prepare tertiary food science students for the workplace. Programs in the curriculum should support the development of transferable skills such as communication, problem-solving, and planning. This paper describes a case study of a new capstone project for Masters of Food Science students based on a work integrated learning model. Students were engaged to develop a HACCP plan for a cheesemaker. They interacted with a peer group, academics, and with professionals from the food industry. Two iterations of the project were completed. Staff and student feedback from the first iteration informed modifications in the subsequent iteration. Industry partners and an authentic work task were key components of the project. The model could apply to a broad range of programs that require a capstone project in the curriculum.

Drawing on in-depth empirical research, we explore a project called The Welcome Dinner (WDP). The WDP aims to bring together 'newly arrived' people and 'established Australians' to meet and 'share stories' over a potluck meal in 'the comfort of their own home'. The purpose is to create meaningful connections, new friendships and social solidarities. In this paper, we focus on the micro-contexts of the dinners and the minute activities and techniques that facilitators use in hosting. Our aim is not to analyse the effects of the project but rather the design and meaning of the activities. As a form of 'designed everyday multiculturalism', focused on welcoming new arrivals to Australia, it takes effort, skill and labour to manage the contact between different cultural groups over organised meals. Thus, facilitators take over the hosting of the lunches and dinners to run activities, which are imagined to lubricate social dynamics and relations, and produce convivial commensal affects and behaviours. Drawing on theories of training activities as embodied and cognitive experimentations, which enable new knowledge practices and social relations, we analyse field notes and interviews about the facilitation, structure and activities at the WDP home dinners.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe students' self-reported learning from engaging in an experiential learning task designed to develop their understanding of sustainable food systems and dietary practices. Design/methodology/approach: In all, 143 first-year students enrolled in an entry level food and nutrition subject undertook a three-week eco-friendly food challenge: (1) Reduce food (and food-related) waste; (2) localise food purchases; (3) eat seasonally and sustainably; or (4) reduce meat consumption. They blogged about their experience and respond to an action-orientated reflective question each week. Content analysis of the blogs was undertaken using NVivo 10. Content was systematically coded and categorised according to action/activity, learning and response to reflective question. Findings: Students reported undertaking a range of self-selected practical activities throughout the challenge. Self-reported learning suggested students gained self-awareness and knowledge and demonstrated problem-solving abilities. The importance of planning and preparation was the most common theme in students' blogs when responding to the action-orientated reflective question in Week 1. In Week 2, students identified socially mediated barriers and the time and energy required to undertake their challenge as the most likely barriers preventing others engaging in the challenge. They provided advice and solutions to overcome these barriers. In Week 3, a range of community, government and multi-sector initiatives to support consumer food-related behaviour change were identified. Originality/value: This approach presents a possible means for engaging nutrition undergraduates with environmental sustainability.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test an hypothesis that teachers' personal orientations toward food preparation, nutrition and environmental issues would be related to their perceived importance of food skills. Design/methodology/approach: Little research has been conducted on home economics teachers' views on the importance of the food skills they teach in secondary schools in Australia. Therefore, an online survey was conducted among 261 home economics teachers in Australian secondary schools. The research measured respondents' ratings of the importance of 70 food skills as well as their teaching preferences and use of resources. Findings: Respondents rated the procedural "hands-on" skills required to prepare a healthy meal as most important. Exploratory factor analysis derived five components (procedures for domestic settings, procedures for vocational settings, cookery methods, food economy, using microwave oven appliances) relating to teachers' perceived importance of food skills. Teachers' personal orientations were described as food aesthete, consumer-environmentalist and nutritionist. The findings showed that these were better predictors of the perceived importance of food skills than demographic characteristics. The most important perceived skills related to the basic procedures required by young people to be able to prepare meals for themselves when living independently. Teachers' personal "orientations" were significantly related to the perceived importance of food skills. Demographic and professional characteristics were poor predictors of these perceptions. Originality/value: The findings provide home economics teachers with an understanding of their selection of particular food skills to teach their students in skill-based healthy eating programmes.

Discourses around Study Abroad (SA) consistently portray a transformational experience for participants who return home forever changed. This article investigates how such change is inscribed in texts addressed to Australian tertiary students considering SA. Acknowledging the significant role of the non-study component of SA in triggering change, this paper focuses on the non-academic domain of food, recurrent in the corpus, 102 SA testimonials from returnees from French-speaking environments of Canada, France and Switzerland, posted on an Australian Group of Eight university website. It investigates the templates provided to shape the imaginary of the readers as to their ideal selves and to legitimize and ascribe value to particular foods and related practices. Are students guided towards the perpetuation of their habits, or in these "foreign fields", is there an opportunity to shift habitus, with food contributing to the reconstructed self? Drawing on Bourdieu and on theories of motivation and of the ideal self, the article proposes a reading that resolves the tension between the integrative use of food, and the future exploitation of the SA experience as a mark of distinction.

School gardens are becoming increasingly recognised as important sites for learning and for bringing children into relationship with food. Despite the well-known educational and health benefits of gardening, children's interactions with the non-human entities and forces within garden surroundings are less understood and examined in the wider garden literature. Using a relational materialist approach (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010) that considers the material artefacts that constitute a learning environment, this article examines children's interactions with the animate and inanimate life forces through three specific garden photographs. The photos belong to data derived from a study that examined food, ecology and design pedagogies in three Australian primary schools. This paper argues that children's interactions with the non-human materialities of a garden are a vital dimension of gardening practice. The agential powers of gardens have great capacity to mobilise and inform children's inhabitation of food gardens.

Sustainable food practices are increasingly of interest to scholars and practitioners concerned with the impacts of food production, consumption, and waste in an age of climate change. Attention has been paid to households as actors in addressing sustainability concerns. This paper draws on a national survey of Australian sustainable household practices to offer insights into the ways households are practicing sustainability across three everyday entanglements with food: (1) growing food, (2) consuming food and (3) wasting/disposing of food. The paper explores the types of practices enacted across the three entanglements and provides an understanding of the prevalence and barriers for households adopting sustainable food practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 150 years Australia has exported bulk, undifferentiated, commodities such as wool, wheat, meat and sugar to the UK and more recently to Japan, Korea, and the Middle East. It is estimated that, each year, Australia's farming system feeds a domestic population of some 22 million people, while exporting enough food to feed another 40 million. With the Australian population expected to double in the next 40 years, and with the anticipated growth in the world's population to reach a level of some 9 billion (from its present level of 7 billion) in the same period, there are strong incentives for an expansion of food production in Australia. Neoliberal settings are encouraging this expansion at the same time as they are facilitating importation of foods, higher levels of foreign direct investment and the commoditisation of resources (such as water). Yet, expansion in food production--and in an era of climate change--will continue to compromise the environment. After discussing Australia's neoliberal framework and its relation to farming, this paper outlines how Australia is attempting to address the issue of food security. It argues that productivist farming approaches that are favoured by both industry and government are proving incapable of bringing about long-term production outcomes that will guarantee national food security.

The spectre of a food security crisis has raised important questions about future directions for agriculture and given fresh impetus to a long-standing debate about the potential contribution of agricultural biotechnology to food security. This paper considers the discursive foundations for promotion of agricultural biotechnology, arguing that notions of progress and "science-based" risk assessment act as "anti-political" strategies to remove consideration of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from the cut and thrust of politics, while the concept of "food security" reconstitutes agricultural biotechnology as a moral imperative. We argue that a debate ostensibly focussed on developing countries in fact largely arises from discordant views about the future of farming and rural areas in the developed countries where these arguments are taking place. These debates are examined through a comparative study of the UK and Australia. Whereas acceptance of GM crops and foods at government and industry level has not led to commercial adoption in the UK due to consumer resistance and the influence of EU regulations, Australian governments at federal and state level have increasingly embraced GM crops, potentially locking Australia into a food and farming trajectory based on agricultural biotechnology. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Food allergy impairs the health-related quality of life of both the affected children and their families. In particular, parents and children become anxious about the potential risks and consequences of food allergy, including disruptions in families' and children's social activities, the need for constant vigilance, children's safety, and the daily management of children's health and illnesses. These anxieties tend to increase during children's transition to school because of the increased risks outside the home, as outlined in the review of literature in the present paper. However, there is a gap in research on the concerns and support needs of families and children when starting school. Attention to parents' and children's needs and concerns is vital to ease their smooth transition to school.

To address increasing rates of overweight and obesity, a population-based telephone intervention was introduced in New South Wales, Australia. The Get Healthy Information and Coaching Service[R] (GHS) offered participants a 6-month coaching program or detailed self-help information. Determining the population reach of GHS is of public health importance to ensure that the program reaches disadvantaged groups. This paper describes the socio-demographic and risk profile of participants (n = 4828) in the first 18 months of operations, determines how representative they are of the population, assesses changes in participants' socio-demographic profile and compares "information-only" and "coaching" participants. The results show that GHS users are representative of the adult population in relation to education, employment status, Aboriginal status, fruit and vegetable consumption and alcohol use. However, more female, middle-aged, English-speaking, rural and socially disadvantaged adults participated in GHS. Coaching Participants were more likely to be overweight and to be ex-smokers than the general population. There was substantial variability in GHS recruitment, when mass-reach television advertising was used, participants enrolled from a major city and from more disadvantaged communities. The GHS has broader population reach than many local interventions, but further efforts are needed to increase reach by Aboriginal communities, other minorities and men.

Purpose: A comprehensive whole-school approach has emerged as a promising model for building connectedness in the school setting. The health-promoting school model, through its whole-school orientation and attention to the school organizational environment, identifies structures and processes that influence school connectedness. This paper aims to investigate this model. Design/methodology/approach: This study examines the key mechanisms of health-promoting school structures and processes, as well as the pathways of their influence on school connectedness, by using a qualitative case study methodology in three school communities in southeast Queensland, Australia. In-depth interviews, focus groups, observations and documentary evidence provided the data. Findings: Key elements of the health-promoting school model that facilitated interactions between school community members were events that were characterised as positive, social, celebratory, and with no financial cost, as well as informal gatherings that involved food or events with communal eating. Through these interactions, mutual reciprocal relationships were developed. School community members began to learn about and understand one another's positive qualities, which in turn promoted additional aspects of school connectedness. The key elements and pathways of the health-promoting school approach were supported by factors such as informal teaching, reinforcement, adequate time for relationships to develop, and being embedded within the whole-school orientation. The results of this study are used to formulate a theoretical model of how the health-promoting school approach builds school connectedness. Originality/value: These findings are important because they provide insight into the central role of food in the school culture and how it links other key elements and factors that can be implemented in the school setting to build connectedness. (Contains 3 figures.)

This paper examines the role of certification in alternative agri-food networks (AAFNs), which are "in the process" of building markets for their produce outside conventional supply chains. Drawing upon recent writing on "embeddedness", we argue that certification provides an important focus for exploring the relationship and tensions between horizontal and vertical dimensions of embedding processes, and thereby understanding the complexities of agri-environmental governance. Through a case study of a group of beef farmers in south-eastern Australia, we investigate how one type of process-based certification--Environmental Management Systems (EMSs)--was used as the basis for constructing an AAFN and selling a premium environmentally certified product. The case study shows that environmental certification had mixed results for this AAFN. For instance, while it represented a useful means of building consumer trust, considerable time and effort was required by producers to target and build a market for the certified product. Producers initially had little to gain financially from a third-party-certified EMS. However, despite the current lack of broad consumer demand for non-organic environmentally certified products, the farmers we interviewed did not reject the EMS process entirely--they used it to realise a range of non-monetary personal and community benefits. We conclude that certification can be a useful strategy for those AAFNs in the process of expanding beyond direct marketing. Nevertheless, the lack of consumer understanding and demand means that certification may be adapted and combined with other producer strategies to meet personal and societal expectations regarding land stewardship.

Children with life-threatening food allergies are increasing in number in Australia. A variety of foods such as dairy milk, peanut and tree nuts, fish and egg can cause severe allergic reactions in some children. The foods that cause allergies could trigger severe breathing difficulties (anaphylaxis) for these children and, if not treated immediately, could lead to death. Caring for a child with potentially life-threatening allergies has social, emotional, and financial consequences. This paper gives an insight into the psychosocial and cultural aspects and experiences of a migrant mother in raising a child with multiple and potentially life-threatening food allergies. It also advocates for improved and equitable access to child care for these children.

Aims: This study aimed to identify and evaluate tools and resources used to support the implementation of workplace healthy food and drink policies, primarily in Australia and New Zealand. Methods: A scoping grey literature review included searches of government agencies and non‐governmental organisations' websites in six English‐speaking countries, public health nutrition intervention databases and Google search engine queries. Paper‐based and digital tools were included if they were written in English, referred to within a policy or on a policy's website, and primarily targeting supply‐side stakeholders. Tools were evaluated on two domains: 'Features' (summarised descriptively) and 'Usability and Quality' (with inter‐rater reliability scores calculated using an intraclass correlation coefficient). Results: Twenty paper‐based tools were identified relating to Australian (n = 14) and New Zealand (n = 6) policies, and a further six digital tools were identified from Australia (n = 3) and Canada (n = 3). Target audiences included workplace managers, food providers and suppliers. The paper‐based tools focused on general implementation guidance. In contrast, digital tools tended to support specific elements of policy implementation. 'Usability and Quality' scores ranged from 2.9 to 4.5 (out of 5.0) for paper‐based tools, and 3.9 to 4.2 for digital tools, with a moderate agreement between reviewer scores (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.523, p = 0.010). Conclusions: A range of tools have been developed to support the implementation of workplace healthy food and drink policies. Understanding the strengths and limitations of current tools will assist in developing improved aids to support policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents arguments for and against the theory and practice of genetic engineering. Considers the food labeling controversy and general ethical issues related to genetic engineering. (Author/WRM)

In a study on children, families and food messages in Victoria, Australia, we utilised a multi-methods approach that included visual data produced by primary-school aged children. Working with 50 families, we provided each child investigator with an iPad for 3–4 days and invited them to photograph family food events important to them. The analysis of visual data alongside child and family interviews revealed the diverse meaning-making practices children draw on to understand food practices at home and school. These research practices aspired to locate the researchers and children as co-creators. In this paper, we reflect on the challenges and (dis)comfort we faced as researchers as the implications of co-creation emerged and we engaged with children's voices, photos and families inside their homes. The multi-methods approach supported a comprehensive and rich engagement with commensality and pleasure in food practices at home for children, but illuminated the complex emotional and intellectual terrain of such research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]