The Research School

We knew that the children already had good knowledge of food and about what is considered healthy and unhealthy food for children. They were, of course, also experts on being children and on their own foodscapes. On the other hand, they could not be expected to know much about research. This was expertise that we possessed. Inspired by Mary Kellett et al. (2004), we organized, within the project framework, a simple “research school” consisting of the following phases:

• Start-up – introducing food and foodscape

• Formulating research questions

• Developing methods - gather materials

• Analysing

• Reporting

7.1. Start-up

First on the agenda was to direct the children's interest towards the focus of our project: food, to problematize the concept of food with them, to introduce our tool foodscape and to some extent to teach them a little about food and health.

Each classroom had a study area, and we placed two groups in each classroom and one group in each study area. We moved benches together to form a large table that we could sit around together. At the first meeting with their tutors all the children received research books: hardcover, black books with red edges and lined paper. They were also asked to choose the name of the group, and because the group’s name appeared in some of the texts and pictures produced by the co-researchers, we believe that the naming may have been important and have contributed to team spirit. We tried to leave the definitions of food and foodscape to the children by using the brainstorming method, and made use of their creativity and interest in other forms of expression than words by asking them to draw and paint. This was done using the following four activities:

7.2. What is food?

The co-researchers were asked to associate to the word 'food' and write a list of what came into their minds. The activity worked well. At the children's lists there were food and dishes of various kinds, such as pizza, grilled chicken, fried squid,

fruit, ice cream, candy, cake and soft drinks as pear soda and lemonade. There were also tastes such as “good” and “disgusting” and places such as “farm” and tools such as “grill”. Others approached the question from a broader perspective and wrote that food is what you can eat, what you put into your mouth, or that you have to eat food to live. A boy said that food is nutrients and atoms, and another boy gave the recipe for his favourite dish, chicken with rice and “secret sauce”. In discussions afterwards, some children also linked food to dishes cooked for example by Mum, Dad or Grandma.

7.3. Drawing foodscapes

Since we had realized, from our initial discussions with the children, that the concept of foodscape was not so obvious to the children, and might be perceived as “a city of food”, specifically in the form of houses and other things made of cucumbers, meat balls, oranges, etc. we decided to tell them that in this project foodscape meant “places where there is food.” Each child was given a large sheet of paper, colour crayons and pencils and was asked to draw his/her foodscape.

The co-researchers accomplished the task in various ways. Home and school were included in almost all the scapes, kitchens were depicted and the school canteen was included, as were the local grocery shop and a pizzeria. Mothers and fathers and the children themselves were in the kitchens, in the TV rooms and in their bedrooms. Some chose to draw their favourite dish. One boy drew squares showing different parts of the day and marked the time, and his friend watched and tried to do the same. Another boy chose to place a pizzeria in the middle and drew roads leading to it. One of the girls depicted her breakfast, another girl drew a grocery shop. One girl spent a long time drawing a nice coffee shop that she wanted to work in when she grew up. A boy with divorced parents drew both the high-rise block where his mother lived and the terraced house where his father lived. Some children found it difficult to think what to draw and received help and advice from their tutors. Some were encouraged to think about where food comes from before it reaches the shop, and they drew farms, industrial poultry units, spinach growing in the fields and fishing at the pier. One boy drew a farmhouse in detail with a barn, tractor, dairy, etc. Another boy began to consider where rice comes from. He drew a ship at sea, transporting food from across the world to Sweden.

7.4. Food diaries

We also gave the children the task of recording a food day. Keeping a food diary is a simple way of structuring the observations of everyday eating into when,

what, where and with whom you eat. This is a proven method in human geography (Ellegård and Wihlborg 2001) and domestic science (Pipping Ekström and Shanahan 1999), and we have also used food diaries with great success in past projects (Brembeck et al. 2005, 2006, 2007). Since we expected that the drawings of foodscapes would mainly provide information about where the food is in the children’s everyday lives, we regarded the food diary as a way of broadening horizons and also drawing the children’s attention to issues such as when and who one eats with. This would give them a better basis on which to set research issues. When the children had finished drawing the foodscapes, the tutors asked them to draw columns in their research books, entitled “When”,

“What”, “Where” and “Who with”. The children were subsequently invited to fill in all the meals in a day in the columns.

7.5. Compilation and analysis

The exercise began with the co-researchers presenting their food days from their diaries to the others in the group. They were also invited to ask questions about each other’s food diaries and to tell the group what they thought was particularly interesting. The tutors then raised the issue of how to compile what they had learned and suggested bar charts, because we thought that this was a moderately demanding method for the children, which they had already worked with at school. We suggested that the children could concentrate on breakfast. Prepared graph paper headed ‘Where do we eat breakfast?’ and ‘Who do we eat breakfast with?’ were distributed. The children took turns to write and colour the different bars in different colours. Then it was time for analysis. Analysis is when you think about what you learned, we told the children. What had they actually learned from their compilations? The children found that almost everybody had eaten in the kitchen, but some in their mother's kitchen and some in their father's kitchen, and the discussion showed that other days it might very well happen that they ate in the living room. In reply to the question “Who with?” there were many options: Mum, Mum and brother, mother and younger sister, family, alone, Dad and stepmother and others.

7.6. Research questions

The tutors went on to ask: “What are we not told by the graph?” Perhaps there were more things the co-researchers wanted to know about the breakfast or any other meal? What were they curious about? This, we told them, is asking research questions. Brainstorming ensued and the tutors wrote down the various issues that

cropped up. Initially, it was not so easy for the children to come up with research questions, and as tutors we helped in various ways. One of us referred to the food diary and asked what extra columns could have been added. Then some children in the group came up with: Are there any brands? What shop does the food come from? What does the food cost? How does it taste? How much energy is there in the food? In another group, the tutor initiated a discussion about where in the world food comes from and the co-researchers then realized that you do not just eat on earth but in space as well, and they pondered on questions like: ‘What do astronauts eat?’ and ‘What do astronauts do when the food runs out?’. When we subsequently reflected on the day, we noted that it would probably not be a problem for the children to think of research questions if they received some help.

The groups also had time for a brief discussion on how to find out what you are concerned about, and we tutors had decided in advance to highlight methods the children had not previously tried, such as taking photographs and conducting interviews.

7.7. The research process

Finally, on that day, we tried to summarize the research along with the co-researchers in each group. They took out their research books again and wrote,

“What is research?”. Then the supervisors went through the difficult concepts from research question to analysis: research questions, learning about your topic, data collection, compilation, analysis, which the children wrote down. We also clarified by recalling that we had already raised research questions with them (where, what, when, with who they eat during the course of one day), that they had collected data using their food diaries, and that we had now made a compilation of the research results in the diagrams. Now it was time to ask new research questions based on the foodscapes they designed the previous time and to move forward with new data collection. Some brightened up and seemed to understand, others were less interested.

We had actually planned a second occasion, where we would go through more collecting of data and the ethics related to it, and maybe let the co-researchers interview each other. But after today's experience, where the children showed impatience about sitting and talking and doing very little in the way of practical activities, we realized that their patience would not suffice for another research occasion with a similar approach, and that it was better to start with more specific research. We therefore decided to deal with ethical issues and to introduce various data collection techniques as they appeared in the groups. At the same time, we

felt that the rudimentary basic skills in the research process we had given to the co-researchers and the concepts we had introduced as a tool had been necessary in order to move forward. We also felt that the discussion on research issues in the various groups provided many good ideas to work on. Both we and the children were now ready to seriously get to grips with food research.