Computer says no: an analysis of three digital food education resources

ABSTRACT

What kind of thing will food education become in digitised classrooms? Drawn from a broader research project concerned with the ‘e turn’ in school health and physical education, this paper analyses three examples of digital food education (DEF). This is done by considering the role of digital technology in changing – or not changing – earlier forms of food education. In each case, these processes are viewed as portals of connection through which knowledge claims are produced, copied, merged, manipulated, juxtaposed and re-represented. Food education is, therefore, conceptualised not as the distillation of scientific knowledge, but as the uses to which this knowledge can be put. Our overall finding – that in many ways DEF is not very different from that which preceded it – echoes other scholars; nutritionism dressed in digital garb is still nutritionism. However, rather than arguing that DEF needs to adhere more faithfully to nutritional science, we argue the reverse; that digital technology has the as yet unmet potential to move food education away from nutritional science towards something more intellectually rich and educationally engaging.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital games
• digital food education
• digitised classrooms
• health and physical education
• actor network theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael Gard is Associate Professor in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at University Queensland. He teaches and writes about health, physical education, sport and the media. This work includes projects on the science of obesity, the history of sport, the uses of digital technology in health and physical education, and the sexual and gender politics of dance education. With Carolyn Pluim, he recently completed his fourth book, Schools and Public Health: Past, Present, Future, which considers the historical and contemporary relationships between schools and public health policy.

Eimear Enright is a lecturer and the Bachelor of Health, Sport and Physical Education Program Convenor in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at the University of Queensland. Her teaching and research primarily focus on youth voice and young people’s participation and learning in health and physical education (HPE). This work includes projects on negotiating curricula with post-primary and university students, supporting student-driven digital HPE experiences, and understanding how and what young people learn on their own terms, in and through physical culture.