Sandwiches and Subversion: Teachers’ Mealtime Strategies and Preschoolers’ Agency
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Keywords
Agency, directives, ethnography, mealtime, preschool
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568214539711
Abstract
Mealtimes are understudied processes in the social research on childhood. Our study uses ethnographic methods in two preschools in the southeastern United States to understand the types of strategies teachers use during meals and children’s responses to these strategies. We identified three strategies teachers used to attempt to modify children’s consumption: gatekeeping, directives, and hyperbolic justifications of consumption. We argue that children used agency to subvert to teachers’ strategies using silent and verbal techniques, including attempting to open packages of restricted foods, pretending to eat, and refusing to eat. Their subversion manifested in either “dissent” or “feigned assent.”
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Childhood, v. 22, issue 3, p. 362-376
Scholar Commons Citation
Dotson, Hilary M.; Vaquera, Elizabeth; and Cunningham, Solveig Argeseanu, "Sandwiches and Subversion: Teachers’ Mealtime Strategies and Preschoolers’ Agency" (2014). Social Work Faculty Publications. 205.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/sok_facpub/205
