Exploring Sustainable Food Education as Multi-professional Collaboration between Home Economics and School Food Catering

This article explores microprocesses and transactions during 7 months of collaboration for sustainable food education involving two teachers of home economics and a school food manager in a Finnish secondary school. Data sources included interviews and multi-professional meetings, the professional reflections of participants and a researcher’s diary. Leaning on previous literature, we revisit and develop the concept of shared food sense (joint understanding, collective application, redefinition of co-action) as a tool for analysing the learning outcomes of collaborative multi-professional work. Accordingly, the outcomes were conceptualized as context-bound decisions and compromises that were collaboratively reached after the emergence of tensions in the process. The results highlight the need to acknowledge the complex relationships among systemic, institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal tensions in multi-professional work, as well as to conduct a critical review of the work division, the professional motivations and the opportunities for mutual communication among participants in such alliances.