Learning to care in the food system: Education for Sustainable Development resources, food education and the farming of animals for food

Despite calls for curricula to be repurposed around environmental concerns, and the related significance of food-related emissions to global climate change, consideration of the wider impacts of the global food system (positive and negative) are frequently not well-integrated into education of 5–11-year-olds. This paper makes an important contribution to nascent research around the nature and role of learning resources for education for sustainable development, providing the first review of the place of animals in learning resources for food education. The 117 resources we drew on focused on those that were freely available, directed at ages 5–11, and available to support those implementing the Curriculum for Wales. We reflect on the implications of these findings for the design of future learning resources, focusing specifically on how they could incorporate ideas from literature on more-than-human ethics of care and, through this, how they might prompt not only critical reflection but meaningful actions and engagement amongst learners.