Constructing the Sustainable Food Citizen: A Comparative Curriculum Analysis of Sweden and Finland

Sammanfattning

Aim: This thesis examines how the sustainable food citizen is constructed in thenational curriculum and school meal policy documents in Sweden and Finland.The study investigates how food education and school meals function as siteswhere sustainability, responsibility and citizenship are articulated throughcurriculum governance.Theory: The study draws on curriculum and citizenship theories. Building onWahlström's framework for curriculum knowledge orientations, Barthes'concept of the hidden curriculum, Biesta's notion of subjectification, andWestheimer and Kahne's models of democratic citizenship, the analysisconceptualises curriculum as a political instrument that selects, organises, andhierarchises knowledge while constructing learner subjectivities. Thedistinction between instrumental and transformative approaches tosustainability education, developed by Sterling, Vare and Scott, and Sund andÖhman, provides the overarching analytical perspective through which thesefour frameworks are applied.Method: A qualitative document analysis was conducted on four national policydocuments: the Swedish National Core Curriculum (Lgr22) and NationalGuidelines for School Meals, and the Finnish National Core Curriculum forBasic Education (2014) and the national school meal guidance document titled“Eating and Learning Together”. The analysis focused on three analyticaldimensions: sustainability orientation, imagined learner, and knowledgeselection and hierarchy, in line with the study's analytical framework providedby the theories. A cross-national comparison was then performed to identifyconvergences and divergences across the three analytical dimensions.Results: The analysis shows that while both countries integrate food education withinsustainability goals and treat school meals as educationally significant, theyconstruct the sustainable food citizen through fundamentally differenteducational approaches. Swedish documents frame sustainability throughindividual responsibility and behavioural guidance, while Finnish documentsframe it as systemic, participatory, and collectively oriented. These differencesare visible across all three analytical dimensions: sustainability orientation,imagined learner, and knowledge selection and hierarchy.