‘Practice literacy’ is a new political initiated pedagogical dimension in Danish schools (2019), introducing home economics with final exam in 8th-grade. This study conducts a review, asking: How is practice literacy understood as a didactic approach in home economics?
Home economics, centered on practical learning with food as its core tool (Benn, 2016), faces the challenge of aligning theoretical learning goals with practical skills assessment in the context of final exams. Existing research underscores the challenges faced by home economics teachers in devising practical experiments that foster pupils’ creativity (Christensen, 2017). This is supported by research, indicating that pupils lack practical learning in home economics (Lindblom et al., 2013), and there is a need for more practical approaches to teaching the subject's theoretical areas (Beinert et al., 2021), even though the subject's potential for holistic education is considered inseparable from practical learning (Benn, 2014).
This review, applying diffractive reading (Barad, 2007) through educational theories, yields didactical implications for food craft learning in the Anthropocene (Bennett, 2010). These findings contribute to a PhD project at Aarhus University's Danish School of Education, exploring how pupils' learning processes materialize (De Freitas & Sinclair, 2014) in home economics.

Home economics is often limited to practical food preparation, leaving aside the possibilities of connecting subject knowledge of different fields. Therefore, ‘the scientific theory’ remains too distanced from ‘the everyday practice’ in school education, the understanding of the science-based concepts stands fragmented or inconsistent. The Science Kitchen opened in the autumn of 2023 at Tallinn University in Estonia has started from the need to notice the bridges of various disciplines in home economics education. It creates an interdisciplinary makerspace, an area that encourages learners to make things, create new knowledge, or solve problems with the help of tools, materials, concepts, learning experiences, and disciplines needed in the process. Whereas the ‘Kitchen’ is seen as a wide representation of the everyday practices in students’ lives. Such an approach enables to strengthening of the position of home economics in the educational field, raising it to the discussions of global challenges as an equal partner. The Science Kitchen interactive learning environment and tested educational materials created by the interdisciplinary team support structured knowledge construction and use in everyday practice. The Science Kitchen is a novel concept, and therefore more good practices and studies are needed to fully understand its potential.

The continuation of Consumer Studies Education (CSE) in South Africa is currently under threat. The implementation of the curriculum area, one of the fundamental dimensions of Home Economics, which is to facilitate students to discover and further develop their resources and capabilities to be used in their personal lives, will be stifled if CSE is discontinued. Is the decision to terminate CSE justified and is CSE relevant to address the job losses, due to economic hardship that affects the livelihoods of individuals and families? A qualitative study using a phenomenological interpretivism approach was used to conduct electronic interviews with 15 academics from eight South African Universities where Consumer Sciences is or was offered. The findings revealed that CSE remains relevant as (1) an academic discipline to educate; (2) an arena for developing basic skills for everyday living; (3) a societal arena to uplift and empower individuals, families and communities and (4) as a curriculum to facilitate economic empowerment. The findings suggest that the decision to terminate CSE is short-sighted and that CSE needs to be reframed to fit the needs of the country: CSE is a means for building entrepreneurs, fostering job creation and consequently building the SA economy.

This study examined the obstacles faced by students during cooking lessons in Swedish Home economics. Observations and qualitative interviews with teachers and students were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three areas of concern emerged when lessons were centred on cooking a whole meal:

1. Understanding the Cooking Process: Students sometimes failed to grasp the intricacies of food chemistry due to task fragmentation. Experienced peers took charge, limiting opportunities for hands-on learning.
2. Impatience and Lack of Focus: Some students disregarded instructions, wishing to emulate improvisational cooking on social media rather than following structured recipes.
3. Timing Issues: Students struggled to coordinate cooking tasks effectively.

These challenges stemmed from a lack of fundamental culinary knowledge, including the inability to interpret cooking terminology and execute methods accurately. To address these issues, method practice lessons were implemented. These focused on connecting sensory experiences to time use and choice of method to encourage patience and a deeper understanding of the cooking process. Students largely enjoyed the new lesson format, spending more time than usual discussing the connections between cooking process and results.

In conclusion, this research highlights the multifaceted challenges of cooking education and offers insights into the advantages of an alternative lesson format.

State of research:
The „SchmeXperiment“ as one method in the scholastic German nutrition und consumer education combines sensory learning with a scientific food experiment (Bender, 2013). The assumption is that this learning path will help analyse the mechanisms of different ingredients. In this study, the focus is on the baking process with yeast and gluten-containing flour as an example to analyse the effectiveness of this method.
The research questions are as follows: What preconceptions and knowledge do students have to yeast and gluten and the interaction of these components? What learning paths will they pursue to understand more about it?
Research methods are a qualitative, questionnaire-based survey and the observation of the students´ learning paths.
The desired and expected results should lead to a further development of the method and to positive feedback effects for teacher training.

Reference
Bender, U. (2013). Ernährungs- und Konsumbildung. Bern, Schulverlag plus, S. 66-71.