Phase 2: Investigate: Inquiry Project Brainstorm

What’s For Dinner? How Food Is Used To Marginalize And Suppress Equity in Society

Key highlights from your Topic Exploration, and some key questions for inquiry within the topic.

1. I’d like to look at food systems as an element that influences our cultural heritage. 
   1. Some key questions for inquiry here:
      1. What constitutes a food system? 
      2. Who crafts or creates a food system? 
      3. How does White Privilege affect the proliferation of a particular type of food system, and subsequently, cultural association with food
      4. How has colonialism used the demolition of food systems to influence cultural changes and domination over other cultures (indigenous issues in Canada!)
      5. How does white privilege and class continue to pervade through our food system?
      6. How does our government and societal organizations continue to perpetuate a form of colonial dominance through their push for particular food concepts as seen through the ‘healthy food chart’ for Canadians?
      7. What are options to change our perceptions of food? Where do we start? What paradigm shifts need to happen?
      8. What are the outcomes for this change? What will these changes look like?

A description and broad strokes plan for your proposed Inquiry Project, along with questions that you may have about the proposed project.

1. 1. I have completely overhauled my idea and decided to do something very different. 
   2. I want to create an entire unit that looks at the role of food and power in a society under the guise of geographical concepts like place and space.
   3. So for my inquiry project I’d like to create a unit of study for my students
      1. The inquiry project would be comprised of a few items:
         1. Understanding the history of food and power relations between different people
            1. I’d like to make this part interactive somehow – this would be my hook – draw students in with their background knowledge on food in their family history
            2. I could use this walrus article as a springboard for generating conversations and as a short activity: https://thewalrus.ca/our-weekly-bread/
         2. Understanding how the presence of food in a culture affects and influences mentalities
            1. I think bringing in some really good articles would be cool
            2. Thoughts on articles thus far: 
            3. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/5/18250471/home-cooking-moral-pressure-cooker – looking at ‘morality’ of home cooking
            4. https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/373/359 – looking at food systems and white privilege and empowerment models of the food pyramid
            5. https://www.amazon.ca/Feeding-Other-Whiteness-Privilege-Neoliberal/dp/0262039818 – the concept of food banks and the ‘type’ of food served there – reinforces certain power dynamics between classes of people
            6. As well – I would like to get students to start thinking about their experiences with food/culture and what THEIR impact is on either encouraging the status quo or pushing boundaries = use a children’s book as a talking point = activity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t_l0OySDkY
         3. I’d also like to bring in the concept of heritage and place with regards to food and geography: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:259a4358-2b71-4d55-940d-9e7664f2d95d/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=Thesis.pdf&type_of_work=Thesis
         4. DEFINITELY!!!!! Want to touch on indigenous cultural destruction through food: https://thewalrus.ca/the-history-of-food-in-canada-is-the-history-of-colonialism/

I guess the questions I have right now are:

1. 1. 1. What would be the best way to order my ideas?
      2. How can I avoid making this unit too ‘theoretical’ and more hands on/encourage collaborative inquiry experiences
      3. What types of ideas do I want my students to ‘unpack’ and explore on their own?
      4. What would be the ultimate challenge for them with their project? Do I want a ‘design thinking’ challenge for them?
      5. How can I bring in community members into this experience as part of that empathy building component?

A short list of the appropriate Learning Principles from BC Curriculum: K-12 Core Competencies, Big Ideas (Understand), Learning Standards for Curricular Competencies (Do), Learning Standards for Curricular Content (Know), and First Peoples Principles for Learning.

• Core Competencies addressed using YRDSB Model – looking at Modern Learning Strategy

1. 1. 1. 1. https://www.yrdsb.ca/AboutUs/BIPSA/Documents/Modern-Learning-Strategy.pdf
         2. Building knowledge and capacity – this project will assist students in developing their deeper knowledge and understanding of how our society is governed and how power is entrenched in a system through exploration of their every day living experiences. This will help encourage students to become more mindful of their external realities and enhance their citizenship 

 

• Learning, Teaching and Assessment – this project will encourage students to think outside of their social boxes and look at the impacts of something fundamental to human existence and how that can be used as a tool for crafting community. Students will also have the chance to engage with community partners through field trips, in class discussions and community guests to expand their knowledge and touch base with other resources in their community to gain deeper knowledge about their world. 
• Ontario curriculum = Grade 11 Open Social Justice Course
  • • • Overall Expectations: Strand: Foundations

1. 1. 1. 1. B2: Power Relations: demonstrate an understanding of the dynamics of power relations in various social contexts
         2. Overall Expectations: Strand: Equity, social Justice and change 
         3. C3. Social Activism: demonstrate an understanding of how social activism can be used to support equity and social justice objectives. 
      2. BIG IDEAS: how does food influence our social landscape? How does the concept of food encourage the status quo for power dynamics in a society? What can we do to create a more equitable society through the divestment of power from food discussions?

• First Peoples Principles for Learning:

1. 1. 1. Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions.- students will understand how government policies can help reinforce power dynamics and invalidate marginalized groups
      2. Learning requires exploration of one’s identity. – students will understand and learn how food and one’s associations with food helps shape identity BUT that certain identities are encouraged and accepted, while others are not

An explanation of your current understandings of inquiry-based pedagogy related to your topic and proposed project.

1. 1. Good projects and teaching practice recognize students should be engaged in the beginning of the process – so designing elements of your instruction that ‘hook’ students and showcase the relevance of your material to their realities
   2. Good projects require an instructor who is willing to design content that gives students a taste of real world subject matter – so you aren’t just providing irrelevant and off topic content – your content could be taken and used in post-secondary contexts. This type of real world knowledge breathes life into your teaching content
   3. Good projects encourage students to use the knowledge gained from their activities to help craft meaning for their own lived experiences. The point of any knowledge in an inquiry based platform is to help students develop more lenses through which they can see the world and interpret what is happening to them, and what their actions do to others.
   4. Good projects ask students to resolve real world problems – the learning process is not removed from reality. Students are enmeshed with their world, and they learn that knowledge is given and received on a constant basis through their interactions with the world around them and the beings that occupy that space. Students understand impacts by making their own through practical and applicable projects. 

Explanations and APA citations for at least three required and recommended resources, plus three outside resources, on inquiry-based pedagogy 

1. 1. https://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/1366969/mod_resource/content/1/Friesen%20What%20Did%20you%20do%20in%20School%20Today%3F.pdf
      1. This website helps to guide my understanding of how education can be used to encourage students develop as individuals.
      2. “Effective learning environments are characterized by a series of interdependent relationships that promote and create a strong culture of learning” (6) – students see a broad support network of educational tools and recognize that learning happens in all areas of life, and that the linkages between those areas only encourages stronger bonds of knowledge building capacities.
      3. “This experience of intrinsic motivation that Willms, Friesen of Milton (2009) and Friesen (2007) call intellectual engagement, is one in which the learner is so focused that time itself seems to disappear.” (5) – When teachers give students the chance to engage in knowledge building as a process of existence rather than a forced and unnatural act placed upon them, they associate learning with the act of living rather than developing negative connotations towards knowledge acquisition.
   2. Finding Humanity in Design: https://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/1366976/mod_resource/content/1/Quinn%20Bartlett%20et%20al%20Finding%20Humanity%20in%20Design.pdf
      1. This resource will help bring an additional dynamic to my understanding of inquiry and alternative teaching curriculum
      2. “What if we imagined another way, a way that invites students into a topic, to be called upon (Jardine, 2008)? Maxine Greene writes, “sometimes I think that what we want to make possible is the living of lyrical moments, moments at which human beings (freed to feel, to know, and to imagine) suddenly understand their own lives in relation to all that surrounds” (Greene, 2001, p. 7) – This is how I would like to operate with my class discussions and work. I hope to provide students with moments where time falls away and they learn to sit with their ideas, new ideas and the feelings all of this newness generates and get in touch with their inner critical thoughts. 
      3. “ We offered different mindsets and strategies, grounded in story, experience and current research, provoking teachers to recognize alternative perspectives in their teaching practice, creating a culture of optimism and a bias towards action” – I think inquiry models of teaching practice motivate action from students rather than passively intaking information as a learning model. I believe this is the progressive way to encourage students to understand the usefulness of education and how authentic knowledge is acquired, understood and used.
   3. Design thinking Modes – Plattner
      1. https://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/1369842/mod_resource/content/1/Plattner%20Design%20Thinking%20Modes.pdf
      2. “As a design thinker, the problems you are trying to solve are rarely your own—they are those of a particular group of people; in order to design for them, you must gain empathy for who they are and what is important to them.” – I think empathy is the cornerstone to any inquiry based learning experience created for a classroom project. I believe if you want students to engage with real world problems, they need to first begin gaining insights into WHY they should care about those problems and HOW they are connected to any problem that deals with their fellow humans. This helps to cultivate global citizenship, which I believe is at the heart of fundamental and systemic change.
      3. Design Challenge Based Learning and Sustainable Pedagogy
      4. https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/49919322/DCBL_and_sustainable_pedagogical_practice.pdf?1477598551=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DDCBL_and_sustainable_pedagogical_practic.pdf&Expires=1595015461&Signature=HrX3POwhWPZGNotyd86tQVg0sWez1EGYpGICTgf~EDHzNg9AO-bufUxdWv3PjIoMmD2Z-gQAN8srxayMnT-Dz1oZNd96-d7nk5ovUMZaUJx83RNLQ2cacAl3JPyBpw54f80wHX2xPyIVzqSD6kOb2dChbj3I~fLr0zjm0HwkwBPYM9YDvMcaFZ8l43yujwrbcGTVZ3LKhV7xUvmcxXvf5ulHytNDozIiDgN5828URhdha4EvP22hlGocYxztuTZakJMMeni5RhbTtAXDLx8afRyAp5rF5P~UHXAZ-7pwgc9AsQVK0PvFAmtq9m8x7kIW~Bq5cCn3rkdXuJjmF1WP5g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
      5. “DCBL is appropriately described in this Sustainably Ours forum, because it is an issues and values-first pedagogical paradigm. DCBL relates to sustainability in two senses” – I like the idea of recognizing that projects derived from inquiry based pedagogies infuse values into the development, implementation and outcomes of school based projects. I think by emphasizing and encouraging values in students, we are also encouraging the sustainability of student activism and advocacy as a life choice.