RE-TASTY
Research - Transformative Actions for Sustainability Together with Youth
How it works
The students are the citizen scientists in this project. They will first assess the food system and food culture within their own school. They will find out where improvements can be made and what they themselves would like to change about the food culture in their school. In the second part of the process, these citizen scientists will set up a monitoring system to monitor the main components of a healthy and sustainable school food system.
These two parts of the process are summarized below in five steps:
Topic contextualization
The students will be provided with background information in order to have a wide discussion on the components of sustainable and healthy school food systems, the Whole School Food Approach and the use of citizen science in education.
Formulation of sub-research question
The umbrella research question of RE-TASTY is ‘How can school food systems be transformed into healthy and sustainable through the Whole School Approach?’. The students will be guided to draft their own sub-research question having the Whole School Food Approach model as their guiding framework.
Data collection (reviewing and monitoring of the school food system)
The students will think about the different school stakeholders (e.g., teachers, students, parents, school canteen staff) and then co-create their questionnaire and a data collection plan that they will ultimately use to do the interviews.
Data analysis and interpretation
The students will look for themes in their data, come to some main conclusions and prepare a summary of their conclusions for the other school stakeholders.
Action and reflection
Based on the conclusions, the students will decide on an action to initiate for the school.
During implementation, the students are expected to spend six to eight hours on the various research activities/training plus some extra hours for the implementation of the action (depending on the time that the students and the staff have available). The data collection (interviews) as well as the implementation of the action will be carried out in their own time.
This project can be offered in English or in Dutch. It can also be implemented and adjusted to the needs of each school. Schools are free to choose to implement it either within the curriculum (e.g., within a school subject) or as an extracurricular activity.
The participation for the schools is free of charge and no preparation is needed on behalf of the teachers.