The convivial concealment of religion: Navigating religious diversity during meals in early childhood education – A Norwegian case

ABSTRACT

How are religiously based eating regulations navigated in kindergarten, and how does the pedagogical context influence the children’s understandings of religion and nationality? This article builds on a qualitative case study involving observations and group interviews with children in a Norwegian kindergarten. At mealtimes, some children ate different food than their peers due to religiously based eating regulations. Notably, no children connected these differences to religion. Utilising Paul Gilroy's concept of conviviality, I argue that the staff contribute to a convivial concealment of religion. Their approach avoids reducing children to their religious background, and facilitates connections based on shared experiences and interests. However, it fails to give children a deeper understanding of religious diversity and does not address problematic aspects of some children’s working theories. Thus, convivial concealment may contribute to subtle, but significant, processes of exclusion. The study contributes to discussions of everyday religious diversity in educational settings, coining the term ‘convivial concealment of religion’ and analysing consequences of this pedagogical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• conviviality
• meals
• early childhood education
• working theories

Introduction

Western societies are becoming increasingly religiously diverse, partly due to increased immigration, and so is Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Consequently, teachers must handle difficult practical and ethical issues related to religion. Their pedagogical choices may have a strong impact on children’s learning and identity formation, as well as on processes of inclusion and exclusion. Still, the navigation of religion in ECEC has received limited scholarly attention (Aslan 2020).

This study reports negotiations of practices related to everyday religion (Ammerman 2020, 2007) in a Norwegian Kindergarten. A particular focus is on the children’s interpretations of halal during mealtime. The article aims to investigate the following research question: How are religiously based eating regulations navigated by staff and children in a culturally complex Norwegian kindergarten, and how does this pedagogical context influence the way the children understand and negotiate questions about religion and nationality?

Meals are generally seen as social events (Kjærnes 2001, 159). Following Douglas (1972), meals involves inclusion and exclusion, intimacy and distance, borders and transactions across borders. Several scholars point out strong links between food, religion, and nationality, even if the borders are complicated when looking at individual food practices (Brown 2017, 2016; Harvey 2015).

Children are initially socialised into their families’ culture, including their food practices, but are often at an early age faced with institutional fields through participation in ECEC (Corsaro 2017, 25). For many children, ECEC will be the first place they encounter food practices, religions, and worldviews different from their own family. It is also the first place they encounter how other people respond to markers of their families’ religious identity. This makes negotiation of religiously based food regulations highly relevant to study to understand everyday religion in ECEC, and its possible impact on children’s learning and identity-formation.

The case of Norway: religion and early childhood education

This article studies negotiations during meals in a Norwegian kindergarten. Historically, the majority population of Norway have been Christian, and still 65% of the population are members of the Church of Norway, a protestant church (Statistics Norway 2022). However, the religious landscape of Norway is rapidly changing. Furseth and colleagues describe Norway, as well as other Nordic societies, as religiously complex, with different religious trends coexisting on different levels. On one hand, there are ongoing processes of secularisation. On the other hand, immigration contributes to larger religious diversity, and there is a growing visibility of religion, particularly Islam, in the public sphere (Furseth et al. 2019). This cultural complexity is also affecting many kindergartens.

The Framework plan for kindergartens, a legally binding curriculum document for all Norwegian early childhood centres, gives several instructions on how religion should be treated in ECEC, reflecting this increased diversity. For instance, staff shall ‘support, empower and respond to the children according to their respective cultural and individual circumstances’ and ‘highlight differences in values, religions and world views’ (Directorate for Education and Training 2017.: 9). However, a growing body of research finds that there is a gap between policy and practices, that ECEC-staff find religious diversity hard to navigate, and that they often make pedagogical choices that favour children of cultural majority background and create limited room for difference (Fauske 2012; Hidle and Krogstad 2015; Krogstad 2016, 2017; Krogstad and Walmann Hidle 2015; Giæver 2019, 2020; Lauritsen 2013, 2014; Toft and Toft Rosland 2014; Olav and Sødal 2022). While Nordic policy documents have both similarities and significant differences when it comes to the position of religion in ECEC (Kuusisto, Poulter, and Harju-Luukkainen 2021; Boelskov 2015), studies from Sweden, Finland and Denmark indicate that challenges related to religious diversity are perceived and handled in similar manners across countries (Puskás and Andersson 2017, 2018, 2019; Reimers 2020; Kuusisto and Lamminmäki-Vartia 2012; Boelskov 2015). This suggests that the present study has relevance also outside the Norwegian context.

Three studies that have investigated religiously based food regulations in ECEC are particularly relevant for this article. Andreassen and Marie Øvrebø (2017) study from Norway found that staff created partly pragmatic and partly pedagogically based strategies. While some staff viewed the food regulations as an opportunity to normalise diversity, others saw the regulations as challenging. Lauritsen (2013) analysed how staff in a Norwegian Kindergarten reflected upon the topic of Muslims and pork. She identified a move from a generalised idea that not eating pork is a group identity marker for Muslims, towards seeing questions of food as a matter that needed to be examined on an individual level. Lauritsen viewed this as a constructive process where the staff gained an increasing understanding of minorities as complex and shifting. However, she also identified parallel tendencies of majority-based equality practices that left little room for difference. Stier and Sandström (2020) found that Swedish ECEC-teachers found it hard to deal with requests from parents for halal-meat in the ECEC-centres, and that they applied different avoidance strategies to deal with the challenge. These studies all give valuable insight into the teachers’ reflections and approaches to the handling of everyday religious diversity in ECEC. What is lacking in all these studies, is reflection on how the context of ECEC may influence children’s understanding of religion, and this is precisely what the present study aims to do.

Methods

My material was collected through an ethnographic approach, implying an open ended research design and being an active participant in the research process (Hammersley 2007, 4–18). I approached the field with abductive strategies as an ‘informed theoretical agnostic’ (Timmermans and Tavory 2012, 169), adjusting the research design and the analytical lens both during field work and while analysing my findings to investigate what I observed as an ‘observational surprise’ (Timmermans and Tavory 2012, 169). I will return to this surprise and its methodological consequences after describing the main material and reporting the logistics and ethics of the observations.

Fieldwork, practicalities and ethics

The research project was registered and approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data.¹ After a 12 day pilot study (Yin 2009: 92–95) in two different kindergartens in March 2019, one of the kindergartens were chosen for a further 24 days of fieldwork conducted in the period between November 2019 and June 2020. The kindergarten contained three sections with a total number of 57 children aged 3 to 6 years.

The kindergarten staff helped inform and gather consent from the children’s parents, and the staff members I followed closely gave individual consent to participate in the study. 43 of the 57 children’s parents gave written consent for their children to participate in the study. The analysis is based on observations and informal conversations with staff members and these children, as well as group interviews with 30 of the oldest children. All participants have been anonymised. I use pseudonyms, do not state their age, and some participants national background have been changed.

As several parents did not consent for their children to participate in the study, the general observations were recorded by note taking. To secure ongoing consent from the children (Flewitt 2005; Graham, Ann Powell, and Truscott 2016), I approached them guided by an ethics of care (Mortari and Harcourt 2012, 239–41), sensitive to signals from both the children and the staff members who obviously knew the children better than me.

The observations took place both at mealtimes and during other activities. My first observations were written down retrospectively because I prioritised building relationships with the children, taking the role of a learner (Graue and Daniel 1998, 99–101). I later changed to bringing my computer into the kindergarten, writing on site to gain higher accuracy and to clarify my role as a ‘different’ adult (Gulløv 2003, 113–7). Depending on the organisation of the meals in the sections, I would join the children at their tables or sit behind them writing notes as I observed. As a playful reminder of my position of being a researcher, I started wearing a big sign stating ‘researcher’ in capital letters. Even though few of the children could read, they were aware of signs having particular meanings (Treiman et al. 2016). Several children seemed to enjoy the attention of being experts and asked me to point out their names in my notes or read them extracts of my observations out loud.

The kindergarten was religiously diverse. According to staff, the children came from families with non-religious, diverse Christian (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim backgrounds. The staff’s main source of knowledge about religious background was asking parents about special concerns regarding what the children could eat in kindergarten. All sections of the centre had children whose parents had asked for religiously based accommodation of food. 11 of the children in the sections I observed were to be served food considered halal by their parents. For some, that meant not containing pork, for others it included not eating food with gelatine. In addition, one child was not to eat pork due to Orthodox Christian background. The staff were aware that other children had parents who observed certain food regulations at home (for instance not eating pork, or not eating beef), although they did not ask for their child to observe these regulations in the kindergarten.

While observing, I found it interesting that the staff made several efforts to tone down the differences in eating regulations, and that they rarely were addressed as related to religion in communication with the children. This ‘observational surprise’ (Timmermans and Tavory 2012, 169) affected the methodological design, prompting me to ask the question ‘what is the consequences for the children’s understanding of religiously based differences’, a question empirically investigated further through interviews with the children. The interviews were conducted in small groups, both to make the children more relaxed, and to allow for observation of how they responded to each other’s explanations (Graue and Daniel 1998, 114).

Staff members helped me create groups for the interviews, considering which children went along well with each other and could give each other space to talk, and leaving out children that for different reasons seemed reluctant to take part. Combined with considerations related to the ongoing covid pandemic at the time, this resulted in 30 children being interviewed in 11 groups of 2–4 children. The interviewed children were between 4 and 6 years old.

The interviews were held and audio recorded in a separate room while the rest of the children were in their respective sections. To structure the conversations and keep the children’s attention (Graue and Daniel 1998, 114–5), I presented photos from mealtimes in the kindergarten as starting points (see Photos 1, 2 and 3).² I invited the children to describe the photos, before continuing with questions such as if the food pictured was food all children in their section could eat (and eventually why not), and if they knew the meaning of the word ‘halal’ (written on a note visible on two of the pictures).

Photo 1. Open end sandwiches. The tray to the left contains two kinds of pork-based sausages, as well as liver pâté, a cheap and common spread in Norway. The tray to the right contains different kinds of spreadable cheese (white and brown), as well as slices of white and brown cheese. All common spreads in Norway.

Photo 2. Meat balls and sausages. The plate has a note stating ‘halal’.

Photo 3. Photo from a Christmas meal showing food such as potatoes, red cabbage, sausages, gravy, and meatballs. One of the plates has two notes stating ‘halal’.

Analytical strategies

I analysed notes from observations, audio records and transcriptions from relevant parts of the interviews using abductive strategies (Timmermans and Tavory 2012) and principles of thematic analysis, moving back and forth between the set of data through the entire process of writing (Braun and Clarke 2006). The first stage of analysis involved reading the notes searching for recurrent and striking themes, starting broadly with descriptions of the organisation of meals and the conversations at mealtimes, before developing codes such as ‘no awareness of differences’, ‘personification of food regulations’, ‘food as allergies’, and ‘food as related to national background’.³ This were arranged into broader, descriptive, and data-driven themes, categorising practices of inclusion and exclusion.

The categories were refined in the next stage of the analysis by extending my theoretical framework in line with abductive analytic strategies (Timmermans and Tavory 2012). I found two theoretical tools particularly useful. First, Gilroy’s (2004) notion of conviviality helped analysing the pedagogical context of the kindergarten and consequences of the intentional or unintentional approaches to the religious diversity. Second, Hedges (2011, 2014) understanding of children’s working theories made it possible to discuss the influence of the kindergarten’s pedagogical approach on the children’s knowledge formation. These theories informed the subsequent stages of the analytical process, and helped refine the analysis during the later stages of writing (Braun and Clarke 2006, 86). I will explain these concepts before presenting my main themes and describing the key findings.

Conviviality and working theories

While several terms related to the study of everyday diversity are partly overlapping (see Wise and Noble 2016 for overview), I found the concept of conviviality (Gilroy 2004) a particularly useful analytical tool due to its combination of a descriptive and processual approach to diversity. Gilroy uses conviviality as a term for the ‘process(es) of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life’ (2004: xi). Here, he focuses on ‘the ordinary experiences of contact, cooperation and conflict across the supposedly impermeable boundaries of race, culture, identity and ethnicity’ (2004: xii). Within the growing body of research applying conviviality as an analytical concept, Wise and Noble (2016) argues for not only seeing conviviality as an attribute of everyday coexistence, but as a distinct outcome of practices and processes. In order to research this, empirical studies encompassing both the well-functioning sides and the more problematic power dynamics involved in cultural negotiations are needed (Wise and Noble 2016). Hence, my analysis will focus on both the affordances and constraints of the approaches to religious diversity related to meals.

To analyse the children’s understanding of religion, I found it useful to apply the concept of working theories, particularly as developed by Hedges (2011, 2014). In line with sociocultural perspectives on learning, she describes how children may evolve working theories as explanatory connections between experiences or observations that appear related in some way. Hedges sees working theories as ‘ways children process intuitive, everyday, spontaneous knowledge and use this creatively to interpret new information, and think, reason and problem-solve in wider contexts’ (Hedges 2014, 40). Such theories are a key part of children’s learning processes, a way to make connections between different experiences or to relate different ideas to each other. While they are built on previous knowledge, the theories may be edited, reviewed, improved, or rejected as the children gain new information and experiences. Working theories shape and influence both how children see themselves in relation to others, and how they interact with each other. Hence, the understanding of working theories as accessed through the children’s utterances serve as a useful way of investigating how children understand and negotiate questions of religion and nationality. The lens of working theories also makes it possible to see how the staff may affect the children’s knowledge and understandings.

Findings

My key findings may be summarised in three themes relating to processes of conviviality and the formation of children’s working theories relating to religion (and eventually nationality). The first theme describes how the staff concealed religion in order to include. The second theme describes how the concealed differences occasionally created subtle processes of exclusion. The third describes how this in some instances led to erroneous working theories, such as seeing not eating pork as related to national and racialised differences.

Concealment of religion and inclusion

My observations found that the staff took the food regulations for granted. The kindergarten’s manager described it as ‘natural’ to attend to the individual needs for different food according to allergies or religion. Both the manager and other staff reported a good relationship with the group of parents, who trusted the kindergarten’s routines for the serving of food. While there were differences regarding organisation of the meals, it seemed that the main approach to inclusion at mealtimes was to minimise the differences related to food regulations.

Often, the children ate open sandwiches with butter and different spread, a traditional lunch meal in Norway (Kjærnes 2001, 12). The staff alternated between preparing the sandwiches in advance and encouraging the children to prepare their own sandwiches. As several common spreads in Norway contain pork, the staff tried to provide different halal options. Halal and non-halal⁴ food was placed on different trays. A few times a week, the children were given a warm lunch. To make these meals inclusive, the staff sometimes served food everyone was able and allowed to eat. At other times, they used different strategies to downplay the fact that not all food was considered suitable to eat for all the kids, and made sure to provide alternatives that looked quite similar.

When the staff talked about the differences in food, I mainly observed the staff referring to specific individuals, as in ‘this is for you’ or ‘this is for Mirwaiz’. Sometimes the word ‘halal’ would be whispered as an assurance or instruction to individual children. I never heard the words religion, Islam or (orthodox) Christianity mentioned by adults in the context of mealtime, and I only observed the words ‘halal’ and ‘Muslim’ used on one occasion by the staff talking to children collectively during meals. On this occasion, one of the plates was labelled ‘halal’ with a written note. The staff member explained that ‘those who are Muslims, they need slightly different food. But it looks the same. It is halal’.⁵ This generated several questions among the children, both Muslim and non-Muslim, about what available food they could eat. The situation, however, stood out as an exception, as religion was not talked about as a reason for difference during other meals.

This avoidance of religion as a subject and as an explanation seemed to be in contrast with the efforts of the staff to recognise diversity related to gender expressions, national backgrounds, and linguistic home environments. The walls were decorated with flags representing the national background of the children’s families, small posters had phrases in different languages, and occasionally the children were encouraged to share what different items were called in their home language. While national background seemed to be a readily applied identity category, religious identities were less explicit. This seemed to be mirrored among the children, who appeared aware of each other’s national and linguistic background, but partly oblivious to the religious diversity of the kindergarten.

During most meals, neither adults nor children mentioned the differences in food, and the conversations covered a range of different topics. The children discussed how to dress up during play, what their favourite colours were, they talked about family, pets, and figures from popular culture, laughed at naughty words, played with their food, or processed what they had done during the day. On such occasions, religious or cultural differences seemed insignificant and irrelevant.

When interviewed, several of the children even seemed unaware that some of their peers had certain regulations for what they could and could not eat. At least 8 of the 30 interviewed children expressed that all the children in their section ate the same food. When asked specifically if they had heard the term ‘halal’, they seemed blank. Two of the children wondered if ‘halal’ was the name of a dance, others said they did not know the meaning or had not heard it before. I found no indications that these children had working theories that related religious or national background to neither the sharing of meals nor their managing of relationships

Concealment of religion and exclusion

The adults normally downplayed the differences in food and handled the adjustments as personalised. Similarly, children seemed to view food regulation as a matter of individual characteristics. Approximately half of the children interviewed related the observance of halal food to the name of specific children in the children’s group. Four of these children self-identified as eating halal.

None of the children related the food regulations explicitly to religion. The fact that the avoidance of pork was related to more than one religious background also made it more complicated to do generalisations. Still, several children applied the term halal in relation to their own or other children’s food regulations. However, they did not connect the food regulations to religious group identity or knowledge of what halal materially implies. The following observation is illustrative:

It is lunchtime, and the children have brought boxed lunches from home, as they occasionally do. Around the table, the children compare and share their food. Mirwaiz asks if he can try some of Igor’s crackers with plain cream cheese. Maida interrupts the transaction. ‘You are only to eat halal, you can’t (have it)’, she says, directed at Mirwaiz. ‘Oh’, he responds. ‘Why?’, another girl asks. ‘He must only eat halal’, Maida answers. ‘Why?’, Igor asks. ‘That’s just how it is’, Maida explains, ‘He can’t eat food that is not halal’. ‘Yes, I know that, that’s why I said no’, Igor states. ‘I can have my apple’, Mirwaiz says. ‘Who wants to eat crackers?’, Igor asks with a singing voice.

In this situation, Mirwaiz is unable to participate in the bonding experience of sharing, even if the food is actually halal. While one girl asks why, the question is answered without an explanation: ‘That’s just how it is’. None of the children present seems equipped or interested in giving a further explanation, or to challenge the categorisation of the food. It appears that because Igor is not known to eat halal, his food probably is not halal either. Mirwaiz attempts to solve the situation by shifting emphasis to eating his apple. Meanwhile, Igor openly extends an invitation for sharing, contrasting the exclusion of Mirwaiz with the possibility of including others.

On other occasions, children categorised plain macaroni and open sandwiches with cheese as not being halal. In these situations, working theories that personalised food regulations seemed to create further, rather than fewer, boundaries between children of different backgrounds. While some of the children interviewed knew they were not to eat pork, others only used the term halal, and referred to their parents knowing what it meant and what they should eat or not. Some were also unsure about what the term ‘pork’ meant, explaining it as ‘meat you can’t eat’.

When asked what would happen if someone who should eat halal, ate other food by mistake, 11 children assumed they would get sick. This included children who referred to themselves as well as children who referred to others. Some used the term ‘allergic’, other explained they would vomit or itch. In one instance, this contrasted with the children’s experience, as one child on two occasions secretly tasted the non-halal food from her friend without any of them noticing any consequences.

The lack of knowledge combined with observed, but diffuse differences resulted in the food restrictions becoming individualised. The main thing was not what the food contained, but whom the food belonged to, sometimes creating borders where no borders were necessary, resulting in subtle processes of exclusion.

Substituting religion with national and racialised differences

Seven children explained halal as rules for children from ‘another country’. This happened both in the interviews and during mealtimes. Not eating pork seemed to be in contradiction to being Norwegian. This was both stated as self-identifications and ascribed to their peers by children with majority background. In one interview, this was a clear contrast to the self-identification of the child.

Eirik eagerly explains, being asked what ‘halal’ means: ‘Shall I tell you, the way Mirwaiz look, those, those who come from other countries, who look slightly brown, but say they are fair (skinned), shall I tell you what they are, they eat such halal. Those who come from other countries eat halal’. Mirwaiz sits next to him, and Eirik turns to him, asking which country he is from. Mirwaiz responds with the name of a Norwegian city. Eirik dismisses the answer and asks the question again. ‘But which country are you from?’. Mirwaiz hesitates. ‘I am from … ’. Eirik interrupts him: ‘Salabi?’. Mirwaiz confirms hesitantly. ‘Yes … I am from Salabi’. Eirik continues, directed towards me: ‘Shall I tell where he is from? Salabi.’ I repeat the word in a questioning tone. Eirik nods and concludes: ‘So he can eat like that. The country is named Salabi.’

While several children related the eating of halal to being from another country, Eirik adds skin colour to the equation. Generalising from the visible marker of skin colour and family background from other countries, Eirik assumes that looking ‘slightly brown’ and being from another country is the reason for eating halal. Even when his peer, Mirwaiz, tells us he is born in a Norwegian city, Eirik overrules the explanation, making up what seems to be a convincing name for a foreign country. This assumption appeared to be present among some of the other children as well, as when one boy did not trust the statement of one of the darker children coming from a Christian family background explaining that they celebrated Christmas. The boy needed confirmation from an adult, assuring that the child did celebrate Christmas. The religious background of the child was not mentioned, nor used as a tool for generalisation.

The idea that not eating pork was related to coming from another country than Norway was sometimes quite a paradox, as several children identified as being from different countries, while still eating pork. The link between being Norwegian and eating pork was explicit in one of the interviews:

Esma and Hodan have explained that they eat halal food, in contrast to a boy present. I ask why some children are eating halal and some are not. ‘Because some are Somalian and some are from Poland’, Hodan explains (not addressing the fact that Esma has Kurdish family background). ‘I’m not from Poland, I’m from Ukraine!’, the boy interrupts. Hodan accepts the interruption but adds that another boy in their section is from Poland. I ask why someone who is from Ukraine does not need halal food. ‘Because he is Norwegian’, Hodan states.

Unpacking this statement, it seems that to come from Somalia implies not eating pork and not being Norwegian, while to come from Ukraine (or Poland) does not exclude being Norwegian. In the section above, pork becomes explicitly relevant in establishing perceived foreignness. However, keeping the previous examples in mind, differences in racialised appearance may also be part of the children’s equation. Later in the conversation, talking about the recent celebration of Id, Hodan makes a similar differentiation when referring to holidays. While she and Esma have celebrated Id, she explains that the boy ‘does not celebrate Id, he celebrates Norway’. From the context, it seems she refers to Christmas as the celebration of Norway. When I ask why Esma and Hodan are eating similar food and celebrate the same holiday even though they are from different countries, Hodan explains it is because they are friends. To me, it is striking that the children do not mention words as Islam or Muslims. This goes for all the interviews: When talking about food regulations, no children mentioned the words Islam, Muslim, or religion.

These children observed material differences in eating customs and developed their own working theories for these differences. With no vocabulary for neither religion in general nor Islam in particular, more visible identity markers were used as explanations. Hence, the importance of national background and even skin-colour were foregrounded, while the children stayed unable to see or express religion as relevant for their everyday life. In the discussion, I will analyse the relationship between the children’s working theories (Hedges 2014, 2011) and the staff’s pedagogical choices in light of Gilroy’s (2004) concept of conviviality, as further developed by Wise and Noble (2016).

Discussion

The convivial concealment of religion

The atmosphere in the kindergarten were characterised by conviviality in several ways.

In the everyday sense of the word, I observed a lively and friendly environment. I observed skilled, kind, and caring adults with explicit intentions of creating an inclusive environment, and who succeeded in facilitating friendship across several kinds of differences. As in Gilroy’s descriptions of conviviality, the interactions seemed ordinary and at ease, and that the communication and relations often went beyond identity categories. In the everyday interactions, multiculture seemed ‘an ordinary feature of social life’ (Gilroy 2004, xi). As such, the kindergarten may be seen as a convivial space (Wise and Noble 2016, 428). In her study from a kindergarten context, Kromidas (2020) states that supporting collective practices and group orientation help preserve conviviality. This also seemed to be the case in my observations. During most meals, the adults’ way of accommodating the religiously based eating regulations while minimising the visible differences allowed for the inclusion of everyone, making sure no children repeatedly felt left out. As a result, religious or cultural differences seemed insignificant and irrelevant, and I had no indications that the children had working theories that saw religious background as important for their relationships.

While descriptions of everyday interactions without friction may seem irrelevant or uncritical, the ordinary coexistence is an important finding. As Wise and Noble argues, conviviality is not given, but actively produced through particular practices, negotiations and efforts (Wise and Noble 2016, 424, 5). These efforts are particularly noticeable in relation to meals. Following Douglas, food categories creates boundaries between different categories of people (Douglas 1972). Brown argues further that group memberships are often represented by, and even based on, food preferences. This can result in a tendency to label people based on their food practices. As such, food is also a way of presenting identities. Hence, Brown stretches the saying ‘you are what you eat’ to ‘you eat what you wish to be’ (Brown 2016, 186). Harvey even sees food as so important for religion, that asking not only what people eat, but also with whom they eat, may be a way to define the borders of their religion (Harvey 2015, 43).

However, children do not make these choices themselves but are served food according to their parent’s instructions. As showed above, this happens without connecting the food to religious identity. Still, religiously based food regulations divide the children into different categories, potentially undermining the communal feeling in the kindergarten. The staff actively blurred these boundaries by minimising the differences, serving food everyone could eat, serving similar looking food when providing different alternatives, and handling the differences on an individual level. This way, the staff succeeded in respecting the parents’ decisions, while avoiding creating borders between the children based on religion. To the contrary, the staff facilitated daily experiences of sharing meals, even if certain components of the meal were unshareable. This shows how the convivial feeling in the kindergarten involved a concealing of diversity related to religion. As shown, this contrasted with the approach to other identity markers such as different national and linguistic backgrounds. So, while the notion of conviviality certainly seemed like a fitting description of the everyday rubbing along in the kindergarten, this was combined with a striking hierarchy in the staff’s approach to differences, and this affected the negotiation of everyday religion.

Several studies have found that staff members find it challenging to highlight religion and religious differences in relation to different holidays (Hidle and Krogstad 2015; Krogstad 2016, 2017; Krogstad and Walmann Hidle 2015; Giæver 2019; Toft and Toft Rosland 2014; Olav and Sødal 2022). This study indicates that religion may also be avoided as a part of everyday life. The strategies applied by the staff members resembles strategies described in studies of staff’s reflections on religiously based eating regulations (Andreassen and Marie Øvrebø 2017; Lauritsen 2013; Stier and Sandström 2020). Andreassen and Marie Øvrebø (2017) views serving food everyone can eat, or serving different alternatives where the Muslim children may choose one, as pragmatic strategies. Stier and Sandström (Stier and Sandström 2020) interpret similar approaches as avoidance strategies. They connect the concealing of differences to teachers’ views of cultures and religions as static and internally homogenous entities. In contrast, the staff I observed showed an awareness of minorities as diverse, complex, and shifting, more similar to Lauritsen’s descriptions (2013). As she argues, such an awareness helps to avoid identifying children based on stereotypes. This is also in line with research warning of children’s experiences of being ‘othered’ on basis of religion, or not recognising or identifying with practices associated with their religious background in an educational setting (Berglund 2014; Schirilla 2020; Stockinger 2022).

As such, whether seen as a result of pragmatism or avoidance, the convivial concealment of religion had certain advantages. This was only observable by studying the practices related to the diverse food regulations, rather than the reasoning behind the strategies. As Wise and Noble insists, conviviality needs to be studied ethnographically as situated practices, emphasising the processual work of rubbing along, involving both well-functional elements and frictions, showing the complexity of coexistence (Wise and Noble 2016, 425, 7). As such, the outcomes of the practices were not singular, and as shown, the strategy of concealing religious differences had implications for the children’s understandings and negotiations of religion and nationality. Investigating the formation of children’s working theories shed further light on the ‘potential ambivalence at the heart of the everydayness of living together’ (Wise and Noble 2016, 424).

The formation of working theories and their consequences

As Hedges explains, working theories may influence both how children see themselves, and how they relate to and interact with others. Hence, it is important for staff to uncover how children connect their ‘snippets of knowledge’, to adjust and correct them if necessary (Hedges 2014, 2011). In my observations, the staff rarely explored the differences in food customs together with the children, neither did they explore or expose the children’s working theories in connection with the eating of different food. This deprived them of reasons and opportunities to correct the children’s wrong assumptions.

The convivial concealment of religion had different consequences for the children’s working theories. As shown, I noticed three main ways of understanding differences in religiously based food regulations. A first group of children did not notice any difference at all, and seemed to believe that all the children in their kindergarten ate the same food. A second group noticed differences but expressed no need for further explanations. However, a third group of children seemed to be aware of the differences and develop working theories explaining the eating regulations with personalised factors such as health, national identity, or racialised differences. Given the centrality of religion as a background for mealtime practices, it was particularly noticeable that no children mentioned religion as a relevant factor for the eating regulations. This is a striking contrast to how religiously based eating regulations play an important role in the creation, presentation and maintenance of identities among adult Muslims with immigrant background (Brown 2016).

The erroneous working theories have different consequences. The first consequence is that the children are deprived of cognitive and communicative tools to understand and acknowledge differences that are present. Secondly, some working theories may have problematic social consequences. While most meals seemed inclusive, there were some occasions where the differences in food combined with incorrect working theories contributed to subtle processes of exclusion. For instance, lack of knowledge about what halal may imply, meant that children were excluded from the community of sharing food. Not because the food shared was not halal, but because the children converted the eating regulations to a more general category of belonging. This created unnecessary borders when the food involved in fact was suitable for everyone to eat. More subtly, the working theories relating halal to nationality and skin colour excluded some children from the more abstract national community of Norwegianness. They were ascribed foreign identities even though they were born and raised in Norway. Thereby, the lack of religion as an available category contributed to processes of othering along racialised differences.

The mixing of religious and national backgrounds among children in kindergarten has also been noted in previous studies (Dubiski, Maull, and Schweitzer 2012, 113), indicating that my findings are not unique. Furthermore, studies have shown that youth with immigrant parents report a discrepancy between their identity as Norwegians, and other’s ascriptions of their national identity. Here, those who are Muslim and non-white face the largest barriers (Friberg 2021). With this in mind, practitioners have reasons to be aware of mechanisms of working theories and exclusion in Early Childhood Education. This is also in line with Hedges and Cooper’s more general recommendation to make children’s working theories visible by analysing knowledge, attitudes and expectations involved (2016), and to address power dynamics related to what type of working theories kindergarten-teachers choose to unpack and extend (Areljung and Kelly-Ware 2017).

Conclusion

This article has discussed how eating regulations in a culturally complex Norwegian kindergarten were navigated by convivial concealment of religion. This contributed to a sense of togetherness and a community based on common experiences. Through their practices, the staff avoided making children stereotyped representatives of their religious backgrounds. Simultaneously, the convivial concealment of religions in situations where it was materially present contributed to the generation and preservation of erroneous working theories among the children. These working theories contributed to subtle processes of exclusion and supported problematic perceptions of the norm of Norwegianness as being white and secular. The analysis shows the use of Wise and Noble’s development of Gilroys (2004) concept of conviviality. They emphasise conviviality not only as an attribute, but an outcome of situated practices, encompassing both everyday racism and well-functioning togetherness (Wise and Noble 2016).

Several studies have pointed out that ECEC-staff risk being blind to the dominance of majority perspectives (Hidle and Krogstad 2015; Lauritsen 2013; Giæver 2020). Still, there is no easy answer to how staff should balance the recognition of difference on the one hand, and the danger of making erroneous generalisations on the other. This study shows how uncovering children’s working theories related to food, religion and nationality revealed concealed consequences of the staff’s pedagogical choices. These analyses are a contribution to discussions of religious diversity in education, as well as studies of the formation of children’s working theories.

A practical implication is that practitioners may want to uncover and question children’s working theories in relation to their pedagogical strategies. This may not only strengthen the children’s understanding, but also help address processes of exclusion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Project number 405,259.

2. The children were shown three photos of meal situations. In addition, we talked about six other photos picturing Christmas preparations. This material is not part of this article.

3. The first part of the analysis was conducted using NVivo, before moving transcripts into Word-files, refining the categories through the writing process.

4. While the religious opposite of halal in Arabic (and the Quran) is haram, I never heard this word used in the kindergarten, neither by children nor adults.

5. The child with Christian Orthodox family background was not present during this meal.