This proposal is based on a qualitative component of a larger Norwegian and Danish project: TASTE Didactics – Food and Critical Thinking 2023-2027. The project's overall goal is to generate knowledge on taste and develop taste didactics in Home Economics Education (HEE) food classes. Through a focus on taste and shared experiences with food, the project aims to strengthen children’s ability to reflect on their food choices. 

Food cultures and food diversity are integral parts of the HEE curriculum in Danish schools. Secondary school students must learn about tastes, foods, and meals from different countries (Wistoft et al. 2022; Ministry of Children and Education 2019). This presents various learning opportunities and barriers, especially in classes where students have diverse cultural backgrounds each bringing their unique food culture background into the classroom. This particular study involves classes consisting of newly arrived immigrant students, as well as classes comprising both Danish and immigrant students who have been in Denmark for less than five years.

Schools have been essential to the process of civilising and integrating children in the Danish welfare state (Gilliam & Gulløv 2014) – an educational task that also includes immigrant children (Jacobsen & Piekut 2022). Over the past 10 years, ´inclusion´ as political and educational agenda has somewhat replaced the focus on ´integration´, particularly in schools (Khavaja 2021). HEE food classes focus on the craft and design (art) of cooking as a practical, bodily, and sensory activity, with students primarily working in groups. Thus, these classes have different conditions for inclusive education (Qvortrup & Qvortrup 2018), compared to traditional academic courses. Thus, we aim to understand the inclusive and exclusive social processes enacted between teachers and students in HEE food classes comprising immigrant students and both Danish and immigrant students. We explore whether and how different pedagogical-didactic practices promote or hinder inclusion, focusing particularly on teachers’ work with taste, food culture, and shared experiences with food.

We draw on different strands of anthropological theory. Firstly, we are inspired by Susanne Højlund’s approach to taste as a social and cultural activity rather than an individual and physiological experience (Højlund 2015). Højlund asserts that ”taste can be used to include and exclude others, to create collective work, to perform identity, and to generate an ‘us’ as well as a ‘them’” (Højlund 2018: 100). Building on this perspective, we focus on the teacher’s role in activating taste as a shared experience among immigrant and Danish students. Secondly, we draw on Marianne Gullestad’s research on the relationship between egalitarianism, nationalism, and racism in Europe (Gullestad 1992; 2002), applying her notions of “equality defined as sameness” and “invisible fences” to show how pedagogic-didactic practices can either create or break down barriers between students (Gullestad 2002).

We combine this analysis with Goffman’s perspectives on roles and relationships (Goffman 2004). Using Goffman’s framework, we highlight how interactions between teachers and students create certain roles for participants in cooking and taste-related activities, and how these roles are shaped through relationships and face work. This approach allows us to investigate and understand linguistic and bodily possibilities and barriers that influence interactions around taste in HEE food classes.

The article contributes to existing knowledge on taste and food diversity highlighting the complexities of concrete pedagogical-didactic inclusive work in HEE classes. We present and analyse empirical examples of different practices and approaches, enabling teachers to distinguish between productive and counterproductive situations and further reflect on their practice. Our aim is thereby in line with the ECER conference theme of generating scientific knowledge that can be used to shape and change the future of educational practice.

The article is based on anthropological fieldwork (Hammersley & Atkinson 2019), including participant observation in HEE food classes at four schools in Denmark (a total of 27 days), as well as qualitative interviews with individual teachers (7 interviews) and with groups of 2–4 students (22 interviews) in Year 4–8. Participant observations were registered by detailed field notes while interviews were transcribed verbatim (Emerson et al. 2011). This material is supplemented by a questionnaire distributed to students in the classes we followed. The schools were chosen to ensure different parts of the country were represented, as well as both urban and rural areas. The project adhered to the applicable GDPR regulations. At one of the schools, we were able to include a so-called ´recipient´ class for newly arrived immigrant students from all over the world. Additionally, other participating schools appeared to have immigrant students enrolled in regular Danish classes who had been in Denmark for less than five years. Although not originally our intention, this provided a special opportunity to illuminate intercultural dimensions and social processes regarding taste experiences and food diversity. During the fieldwork, it became apparent that both inclusive and exclusive processes clearly unfolded among teachers and students in relation to immigrant versus Danish students. Anthropology has the benefit of “revealing ‘things as they are’ in all their particularity and contingency” (Mattingly 2017: 254). This is not to be understood as a positivistic one-to-one uncovering of reality, but rather the fieldwork’s first-person relationship to people’s doings and sayings, their relations to other people in particular situations and contexts, in short, their being in the world, as well as the experimental nature of this relationship (Mattingly 2017: 254). Through the combination of the fine-grained specificity and explorative nature of the anthropologist’s interactions with their surroundings, new analytical perspectives and questions can emerge during the research process, as exemplified in this study. In this sense, anthropology must be understood as an analytical-philosophical stance grounded in a first-person perspective and not merely a method (Danneskiold-Samsøe In Press). Thus, this study can potentially highlight pivotal factors influencing inclusive education, such as the teacher’s pedagogical and didactic approach in the classroom, thereby addressing the need to ensure every child’s personal wellbeing, as prioritized in the ECER conference theme.

The study suggests that by emphasising taste, food diversity, and shared experiences, HEE food teachers appear to encourage positive social relations and interactions between immigrant students as well as immigrant and Danish students. This pedagogic-didactic focus creates opportunities to foster a collective "we" (Højlund 2018) and dismantle invisible fences between the children (Gullestad 2002). By contrast, when this focus appears to be pedagogically and didactically weak, it seems to hinder the participation of immigrant students, allowing Gullestad's invisible fences to emerge between students and between students and teachers. Additionally, the study indicates that teachers' possible negative perceptions of the current welfare model for integrating immigrant students may create resistance and powerlessness toward the inclusive task in the classroom. This powerlessness can negatively impact the student's participation in activities like cooking, thereby affecting their social inclusion. Meanwhile, teachers who consider immigrant students as making positive contributions to the class community can enhance these students’ participation. Finally, the study highlights a significant difference between what it means to be an immigrant student when enrolled in a recipient class, where all students are newcomers, compared to when transitioning to a regular Danish class. In the recipient class, students share a common identity as foreigners, which can protect them from Gullestad’s "invisible fences." However, when moving to a regular Danish class, they become a minority, often with limited Danish language skills. This new setting increases the risk of "invisible fences" emerging between them and their peers, as well as between them and their teachers. Teachers who have experience teaching recipient classes seem to have more success in preventing invisible fences when immigrant students enter regular Danish classes.

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