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

Abstract

Aim: This thesis examines how the sustainable food citizen is constructed in the national curriculum and school meal policy documents in Sweden and Finland. The study investigates how food education and school meals function as sites where sustainability, responsibility and citizenship are articulated through curriculum governance. Theory: The study draws on curriculum and citizenship theories. Building on Wahlström's framework for curriculum knowledge orientations, Barthes' concept of the hidden curriculum, Biesta's notion of subjectification, and Westheimer and Kahne's models of democratic citizenship, the analysis conceptualises curriculum as a political instrument that selects, organises, and hierarchises knowledge while constructing learner subjectivities. The distinction between instrumental and transformative approaches to sustainability education, developed by Sterling, Vare and Scott, and Sund and Öhman, provides the overarching analytical perspective through which these four frameworks are applied. Method: A qualitative document analysis was conducted on four national policy documents: the Swedish National Core Curriculum (Lgr22) and National Guidelines for School Meals, and the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014) and the national school meal guidance document titled “Eating and Learning Together”. The analysis focused on three analytical dimensions: sustainability orientation, imagined learner, and knowledge selection and hierarchy, in line with the study's analytical framework provided by the theories. A cross-national comparison was then performed to identify convergences and divergences across the three analytical dimensions. Results: The analysis shows that while both countries integrate food education within sustainability goals and treat school meals as educationally significant, they construct the sustainable food citizen through fundamentally different educational approaches. Swedish documents frame sustainability through individual responsibility and behavioural guidance, while Finnish documents frame it as systemic, participatory, and collectively oriented. These differences are visible across all three analytical dimensions: sustainability orientation, imagined learner, and knowledge selection and hierarchy.