Environmentality in (food) sustainability education: an analysis of a pedagogic intervention in Italy

This article applies a governmentality perspective to approach education for sustainability. First, we outline governmentality through a Foucauldian lens and consider the emergence of environmentality in Italian education. Next, we analyse education for sustainability teaching and learning dynamics. Focusing on a pedagogic intervention carried out in a hotel-management vocational high school, we explore how school programming, classroom interactions, teachers, and environmental experts conceptualise food sustainability, influencing the pupils' view. Precisely, by analysing the 'From farm to fork' programme - the empirical case study we have investigated - three pedagogic processes are detected: 'framing', 'politicising', and 'normalising'. Our argument is that they work in tandem to problematise the socio-ecological implications of eating consumption choices and to guide students towards the neoliberal solution of sustainability. Implications of this research discuss how neoliberalism influences pedagogic activities, especially as it relates to establishing environmentally responsible action and shaping the ethics of the sustainable citizen.