Farm2School Collaboration - Fostering Food Literacy

Connecting schoolchildren to farms can potentially promote a greater understanding of food production, rural life, sustainability and a connectedness to nature. A qualitative PhD study aims to analyse farm-school educational collaboration in Denmark focusing on the motivation, values, learning goals and teaching methods. Various collaboration arrangements are studied and how learning goals and values of different stakeholders are integrated in the teaching, aiming to identifying future directions. Case studies of different farm-school arrangements involving interviews, observations and analysis of educational materials are conducted. Preliminary findings show that closer collaboration can promote an integration of different subjects, experiments and study of seasonal changes in the teaching. The learning goals of different stakeholders have one thing in common: promoting an understanding of food production and different production systems. Yet, sustainability and food systems perspectives are not well integrated in the teaching.