Sponsor
The material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 1711411 and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Higher Education Challenge Grant, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Award Number: 2018-70003-27649).
Published In
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-28-2021
Subjects
Food Waste, Agriculture -- Moral and ethical aspects
Abstract
Sustainable food systems education (SFSE) is rapidly advancing to meet the need for developing future professionals who are capable of effective decision-making regarding agriculture, food, nutrition, consumption, and waste in a complex world. Equity, particularly racial equity and its intersectional links with other inequities, should play a central role in efforts to advance SFSE given the harmful social and environmental externalities of food systems and ongoing oppression and systemic inequities such as lack of food access faced by racialized and/or marginalized populations. However, few institutional and intra-disciplinary resources exist on how to engage students in discussion about equity and related topics in SFSE. We present perspectives based on our multi-institutional collaborations to develop and apply pedagogical materials that center equity while building students' skills in systems thinking, critical reflection, and affective engagement. Examples are provided of how to develop undergraduate and graduate sustainable food systems curricula that embrace complexity and recognize the affective layers, or underlying experiences of feelings and emotions, when engaging with topics of equity, justice, oppression, and privilege.
Rights
© 2021 Sterling, Betley, Ahmed, Akabas, Clegg, Downs, Izumi, Koch, Kross, Spiller, Teron and Valley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.3389/fsufs.2021.737434
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/36965
Citation Details
Sterling, E. J., Betley, E., Ahmed, S., Akabas, S., Clegg, D. J., Downs, S., Izumi, B., Koch, P., Kross, S. M., Spiller, K., Teron, L., & Valley, W. (2021). Centering Equity in Sustainable Food Systems Education. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 5, 737434. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.737434