NUTR609 - Food and Culture Study Experience

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Unit rationale, description and aim

Successful engagement with diverse communities requires students to be culturally competent, to work within a culturally safe and responsive framework. Multicultural food and culinary culture literacy can support students to establish successful engagement with diverse communities and enrich both their professional and personal lives. This unit will provide students with an immersive real-world experience to facilitate highly developed interpersonal skills appropriate to a new cultural and linguistic environment, participation in a food-related community project in a new and potentially challenging environment, evaluation of culinary cultures and food systems, and advanced food related knowledge and skills associated with culture. In addition students will be expected to develop a personal and professional reference framework for acquiring competence related to a new culture that can be applied in the future to further study, interactions in the community or in employment. The aim of this unit is to help students equip themselves with advanced skills to succeed in a new cultural environment, to relate with diverse groups through food and cuisine and to respect and value diversity

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

Understand the scope and requirements for participation in a culturally immersive experience (GA2, GA4);

Critically evaluate aspects of culinary culture (GA4, GA5);

Relate professionally with a broad audience, showing a profound understanding of a culinary culture and its complexities (GA1, GA5, GA9);

Critically reflect and revise perspectives of a new culture based on experience (GA1, GA2, GA4);

Clearly articulate the value of their experience for their future professional roles or for community or social good (GA3, GA4, GA5, GA6, GA9).

Graduate attributes

GA1 - demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA3 - apply ethical perspectives in informed decision making

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA6 - solve problems in a variety of settings taking local and international perspectives into account

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

Content

Topics will include:

• Preparation for short-term study tour.
• What does it mean to be culturally competent? What is cultural safety and responsiveness?
• How are food and culture interrelated? What is culinary culture?
• Introduction to host location: brief history, contemporary issues
• Culinary culture and culture of host location.
• Communicating and educating through food.
• Basic language and communication skills in host location.
• Community engagement through food-based activities in host location.

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

The learning and teaching strategy adopted aligns with the sequencing of the learning outcomes and consists of an introductory preparatory phase followed by two additional phases. The unit begins with approaches designed to allow students to gain the knowledge required for a immersive study experience and assist them to develop an understanding of the requirements for participating in the tour. These approaches will include online modules and readings and be completed prior to departing on the immersive study experience. Following this, students will engage in a food-related experience in host location. Approaches during the immersive experience will include lectures, discussions, workshops, and a community engagement activity. Finally, the last phase will facilitate students’ critical reflection and translation of their experience for future practice. Overall, the approaches used in this unit have a constructively aligned developmental sequence designed to progressively and logically support students learning in ways that maximise the perceived (and actual) relevance and value of each stage. As an overarching strategy, this is expected to engender high levels of engagement, efficiency and effectiveness in students’ study behaviours, and to maximise their learning achievements. This strategy and approaches will allow students to meet the aim, learning outcomes and graduate attributes of the unit. Learning and teaching approaches will reflect respect for the individual as an independent learner. Students will be expected to take responsibility for their learning and to participate actively in learning activities.

Assessment strategy and rationale

In order to best enable students to achieve unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes, standards-based assessment is utilised, consistent with University assessment principles and requirements. A range of assessment strategies are used in ways that support the developmental sequence of the learning and teaching strategy. Thus, the three phases of the strategy are reflected by integration of ungraded hurdle requirements and two appropriate assessment tasks. What follows are examples that have the requisite purpose:

• Completion of preparatory task (hurdle);
• The first assessment task will allow students to prepare a presentation appropriate to the environment of the study experience to confidently communicate their newly developed critical understanding of a specific culture and culinary culture.
• The second assessment task provides students with the opportunity to critically reflect on their experience upon completion. Students will need to demonstrate how they will use the experience, gained cultural competence, and developed strategies for responding positively to new and challenging environments and how they will transfer their newly acquired knowledge and skills to their future professional role or community engagement.

The assessment tasks will allow unit coordinators to assess students’ demonstration of the learning outcomes and attainment of graduate attributes. In order to demonstrate achieving the learning outcomes students must pass all assessment tasks.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Duolingo app https://www.duolingo.com/. Learn language for free 

Note: Host location resources will differ

e.g. Italy

Brunori, G. Malandrin, V. Rossi, A. (2013). Trade-off or convergence? The role of food security in the evolution of food discourse in Italy. Journal of Rural Studies, 29, 19-29.

Dansero, E. & Puttilli, M. (2014). Multiple territorialities of alternative food networks: six cases from Piedmont, Italy. Local Environment, 19, 6 626-43, https://doi.org/10.1080.

Helstosky, C. (2004). Garlic and Oil: Food and politics in Italy. Berg.

Naccarato, P., Nowak, Z., Eckert, E. K. Ed. (2017). Representing Italy Through Food. Bloomsbury.

Parasecoli, F. (2010). Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy. Reaktion Books Ltd.

Universities Australia. (2011). What is Cultural Competence? A Discussion of the Literature. In Universities Australia National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities. (pp. 37-41) Accessed from https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/National-Best-Practice-Framework-for-Indigenous-Cultural-Competency-in-Australian-Universities.pdf.