Teaching transformation design through food

Transformational pedagogies addressing societal food challenges have not been widely explored. This chapter examines the educational approaches to transformation design at a Japanese university, where 20 local and international students confronted pressing food-related issues in their communities. Influenced by humanity-centred and ecosystemic approaches, a framework for scaffolding personal, societal, and environmental transformation was introduced at the core of the pedagogical strategy. Students initially investigated their individual food challenges. From reflections on their personal experiences, needs, and hopes for improved relationships between food systems and people as protagonists of such systems, the students further engaged in group work employing stakeholder mapping, complexity mapping, and the 5Cs framework to redefine their initial challenges and reframe the food-related issues they wished to address. The next phase centred on co-creating and ideating a plan for a food-related campaign. Students were required to create a poster as an illustrative tool to promote their campaign, along with an implementation plan that outlined a data-driven approach to a food-related initiative. The findings demonstrated how students could think creatively and constructively about personal and social transformations. However, students faced greater challenges in addressing the complexity and diversity of environmental impact. Therefore, improved scaffolding for these steps is necessary, particularly in food design education.