The states of taste: primary and secondary school students’ and teachers’ ideas on food ateliers from a Reggio Emilia perspective

Educational food ateliers can offer a model for promoting food and taste education in both formal and non-formal environments. This study focuses on the food atelier as a setting to investigate stu- dents’ and teachers’ ideas about multisensory food and taste ate- liers and how sense-based inquiries of food impacted their thinking. The study was carried out within the educational context of the Reggio Emilia approach. Data analysis of interviews with 12 partici- pants before and after participating in five different non-formal food ateliers drew on the guidelines for reflective thematic analysis. The results suggest that the sense-based inquiry of food can shift the thinking of participants toward greater self-reflection and self- awareness, which point toward the importance and impact of experiential aspects that the role of food can have in education.