Food and Nutrition in Head Start: A Black Feminist Analysis

• In Event: 42.068 - Examining Head Start: The Role of Curriculum, Nutrition, Assessment, and Research Engagements

Abstract

Objectives:
Head Start, as a federally funded, comprehensive program, has taken a medical approach to its nutrition component (Gotthelf & Jubany, 2005; Nitzke, Riley, Ramminger & Jacobs, 2010). In order to provide a socio-cultural interpretation of food and nutrition, Black feminist thought (Collins, 2008) has been utilized as a theoretical lens to inform research on food and nutrition in Head Start. This has implications for how Head Start supports children’s engagements with food and nutrition and how the program and teachers can provide more culturally connected experiences.

Framework:
Black Feminist thought allows for analysis of interpersonal relations within social contexts (Collins, 2008), such as Head Start. Additionally, it allows for the exploration of identity intersections, links between mind, body, and spirit, and community formation (Collins, 2008). When utilizing Black feminisms as a theoretical lens, definitions of nutrition emerge that support culturally connected experiences for young children in relation to food and nutrition in Head Start contexts.

Methods, Techniques or Modes of Inquiry:
An ethnographic approach was used for the research, where participant observation, interviewing, and document analysis was carried out over one academic year in three head start centers in the Southwest. The focus of the research was on teachers’ pedagogy during meal time, teachers’ perceptions of nutrition in Head Start, and children’s engagements with food and each other during meal times.

Data Sources, Evidence, Objects, or Materials:
Participant observation notes, interview transcripts, and documents related to nutrition (menus, educational materials in the classroom) where the sources of data. Constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lincoln & Guba, 1985) provided generation of emergent themes. Reflexive journaling was also utilized to examine the data through a Black feminist lens.

Results and Points of View:
The results of inquiry illustrate how food and nutrition in Head Start programs, and in particular during meal times, provide both opportunities for children and teachers to engage in community building while also having potential to be a site of culturally disconnected practices. Examples include (1) how the act of eating as a mind-body-spirit practice invokes meaningful conversations between teachers and children, and between children among peers, and (2) how food and consumption practices in Head Start often differs from the traditional/cultural food practices of the children and families the program serves.

Scholarly Significance:
Nutrition, as a key component of the Head Start program, is not commonly examined trough a socio-cultural lens. Findings of this study, then, are significant in contributing to our understandings of how Head Start approaches nutrition, and in turn, has potential to prompt more culturally connected food and nutrition practices.

Author

• Margarita G. Ruiz Guerrero, New Mexico State University