Context-based understanding of food-related queries using a culinary knowledge model

Dietary practices are governed by a mix of ethnographic aspects, such as social, cultural and environmental factors. These aspects need to be taken into consideration during an analysis of food-related queries. Queries are usually ambiguous. It is essential to understand, analyse and refine the queries for better search and retrieval. The work is focused on identifying the explicit, implicit and hidden facets of a query, taking into consideration the context – culinary domain. This article proposes a technique for query understanding, analysis and refinement based on a domain specific knowledge model. Queries are conceptualised by mapping the query term to concepts defined in the model. This allows an understanding of the semantic point of view of a query and an ability to determine the meaning of its terms and their interrelatedness. The knowledge model acts as a backbone providing the context for query understanding, analysis and refinement and outperforms other models, such as Schema.org, BBC Food Ontology and Recipe Ontology

Coming to the Table: Exploring the Narrative of Cafe Reconcile and Learning in the Kitchen

In New Orleans, Louisiana, food shapes much of the discourse around cultural history and identity. Residents of this city identify with the historical and cultural significance of the dishes they cook, and as a result foodways as a curriculum emerges as a way to engage individuals in their learning and development. This study is concerned with how students learn in a space where the classroom is not just four walls and rows of desks, but instead is reimagined to also include a kitchen, restaurant, and the context of the local community. Furthermore, this study explores what learning looks like in a space where food and life skills dominate the daily learning activity instead of the national curriculum. Through six months of site observation and10 semi-structured interviews, I explored the experiences of students going through the life-skills and food curriculum offered at my research site, Café Reconcile. Through their narratives, the following themes emerged: (1) students desire to be part of a community that explicitly shows care; (2) students are empowered and generate internal motivation to persist after gaining membership into the learning community; (3) the shape of learning changes from theory to application within a kitchen space; and (4) within this type of space, learning how to navigate cultures of power takes precedence over the food content

Circular Food Education: Developing a food education programme based on sustainability, experiential learning and pleasure in Irish primary schools

This research explored how an expanded and sustained education about food within the primary school curriculum in the Republic of Ireland could be achieved. A constructivist ontology underpinned the project, with multiple theoretical frameworks related to constructivist learning and building agency, informing the study. A multi-method action research methodology was used, providing practical solutions through action, reflection, practice and theory. A narrative review of the literature and existing policy preceded three sections of fieldwork. A scoping consultation with key stakeholders was followed by the development and piloting of a food education programme entitled the Global Citizenship Food and Biodiversity Theme in eight primary schools over two years, in conjunction with Green-Schools. The third section of fieldwork verified and expanded the results within a research findings feedback workshop which included academics working in education, principals, teachers, trainee teachers, and two staff members from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. The scoping consultation with key stakeholders highlighted a desire for a changed approach to food education in Irish primary schools. The key findings indicated that schools are in a unique position to influence and promote food education, but that an expanded approach to the current curriculum’s principal focus on health and nutrition was required. The term ‘circular food education’ was coined to describe the approach to food education which was consequently developed. Circular food education encompasses experiential learning, sustainability and pleasure. It is grounded in theory and is an educational solution to tackling an array of social issues: building knowledge about climate change, biodiversity loss, and food waste, teaching practical food skills, as well as instilling the potential for children to become active citizens. The development and piloting of the Global Citizenship Food and Biodiversity Theme illustrated how educational approaches that stem from constructivism could be put into practice. This theme included hands-on classes as well as building agency to think critically through the use of collaborative and social learning methods. Amartya Sen’s capability approach was used as a theoretical framework to evaluate data generated from the pilot. The research findings feedback workshop indicated that increased circular food education would require support from the whole-school, a change in approach by government as well as teacher training to address confidence and agency, and the provision of suitable facilities. One of the outputs from the research is the Global Citizenship Food and Biodiversity Theme programme which is being implemented incrementally in schools on a nation-wide basis, with 120 locations to date. A limitation of the Global Citizenship Food and Biodiversity Theme is the two-year cycle of the Green-Schools flag system. The thesis recommends a systemic policy change to food education in Irish primary schools. An embedded full-time approach within the primary curriculum would provide structure and scaffolding but requires a collaborative approach from all stakeholders. Until then, an increase in teacher training and developing teacher agency would be a suitable first step to increased food education in Irish primary school classrooms. Circular food education offers a model, which helps provide students with the ability to lead a life in which both they, and the natural world, could flourish

Culinary Linguistics

Language and food are universal to humankind. Language accomplishes more than a pure exchange of information, and food caters for more than mere subsistence. Both represent crucial sites for socialization, identity construction, and the everyday fabrication and perception of the world as a meaningful, orderly place. This volume contains an introduction to the study of food and an extensive overview of the literature focusing on its role in interplay with language. It is the only publication fathoming the field of food and food-related studies from a linguistic perspective. The research articles assembled here encompass a number of linguistic fields, ranging from historical and ethnographic approaches to literary studies, the teaching of English as a foreign language, psycholinguistics, and the study of computer-mediated communication, making this volume compulsory reading for anyone interested in genres of food discourse and the linguistic connection between food and culture

Food Edu-Care in the Primary Curriculum: A collaborative case study in an inner city DEIS Gaelscoil

This applied case study explored the role of food education and its potential to nurture the lives of children who may experience disadvantage socially, culturally and economically. The research concedes at the outset that the role of ‘food’ in education is complex, that schools do not deal with curriculum matters alone but also with social justice policy issues, and that school-based ‘food poverty’ policy interventions to date are broadly motivated by nutritional concerns. The research was informed by a critical pedagogy perspective using a collaborative enquiry design focused on individual and collective agency at the school level. Multiple theoretical and analytical frameworks related to constructivist learning methodologies, educational psychology, and critical social theory framed the study. The research intervention in the inner-city DEIS Gaelscoil was at the invitation of the Parents’ Council and staff who collectively identified an urgent need for healthier eating practices and a shift to cross-curricular pedagogical practices to meet educational targets in literacy and numeracy. An Integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module was collaboratively developed and delivered in Irish through weekly class sessions and field-trips. The integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module consisted of; sixteen food and cooking lessons, a collaborative Hot Lunch Experience (Pedagogic Meal) and the creation of a ‘Foodbook’ as a class project. The curricular areas included in the integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module included, Mathematics, Language, Social, Environmental and Scientific Education (SESE), Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) and Visual Arts. The outputs from the research include an Integrated Food Edu-Care Pedagogical Guide for teachers and Pupils’ Activity Workbook, an ‘e-Foodbook’, educational videos, flashcards and posters in both English and Irish. The findings indicate that using a collaborative, experiential, caring, active and integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module has the capacity to reach all learners and to build on classroom relationships, thereby facilitating social and emotional learning particularly in the area of self-efficacy and social skills. The research confirmed that such a curriculum module can incorporate seamless compensation for missed life chances and for on-going disadvantage. The thesis recommends a fifth domain of emotional and self-efficacy development needs among primary school children which is better facilitated by systemic policy change to school food provision and integrated curriculum with target-free pedagogies than by narrowly focused, targeted initiatives for free school lunches

Intelligent design techniques towards implicit and explicit learning: a systematic review

Artificial intelligence techniques are advancing in areas like health, cooking, education, and agriculture, aiming to educate users and enhance their knowledge. This survey reviews design tools and their features, introducing a classification of implicit and explicit features from user interactions. An analysis of 35 studies reveals the application of these techniques, detailing knowledge storage, interaction types, algorithms, and evaluation methods. Key findings include the potential of techniques for both implicit and explicit learning, a lack of detailed information in some implementations, and a highlighted need for tools that educate novice software engineers about privacy through design IoT applications

Exploration of programming by demonstration approaches for smart environments

The number of smart electronic devices like smartphones, tablet computers and embedded sensors/actuators in our domestic and work environment is constantly growing. Some of them work as a stand along devices while others already collaborate with each other. It is apparent that once a common layer for device intercommunication between major consumer device manufactures has been agreed upon, a new class of networked smart applications will rise. These applications will dynamically utilise required sensors and actuators of a smart environment to optimally achieve tasks for us human users. Inhabitants of such environments are already interacting with dozens of computers per day. A lot of research has addressed many issues in hardware and software for the future smart environments But few have focused on the users. An important research topic lies in finding simple, intuitive yet powerful enough approaches to allow end-users to create and modify the behaviour of smart environments in which they live and work according to their needs. I believe that for the ubiquitous computing environments to reach its full potential, enabling end-user programming is one of the important criteria. This thesis describes the exploration of various approaches for "Do It Yourself" philosophy in smart environment applications by providing inhabitants with the appropriate tools which empower them to build their environments in accordance to their needs and with enough room for personal creativity. To this end, I choose speech as the main input by the end users along with demonstration of certain parts of over all approach in building applications for smart environments. The resulting application is built on top of the meSchup platform developed during meSchup FP7 EU project at the VIS institute in Stuttgart which provides a middleware for seamlessly interconnecting heterogeneous devices. The resulting web application is called "Speechweaver" which combines speech, programming by demonstration and automatic code generation into usable and intuitive approach for creating and modifying the rule based behaviour of smart environments in place

How do students learn about distant places? A critical analysis of how students’ perceptions of Ghana change over a unit of work

This thesis draws upon poststructuralist theory, case study methodology, and multiple research methods to explore children’s representations of distant places, particularly African places such as Ghana. It investigates the ways in which a particular group of children’s representations of Ghana can be understood as exemplifying an ‘exoticist’ way of thinking explored by Edward Said in his seminal studies Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993), and it explores how and to what extent these representations shifted over the course of a unit of geography teaching on Ghana. The research agenda presented here thus focuses (as Said puts it) on the ‘ideas, … forms, … images and imaginings’ of contemporary geographies of otherness, and considers geography education furthermore as a form of ‘struggle over geography’ in which different approaches to distant places come into contact, with some approaches becoming more dominant than others. The findings from this thesis therefore help to illuminate contemporary challenges in geographical education regarding distant places, and African distant places in particular.N/