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Food literacy is a multidimensional concept that prioritises the aspects individuals require to navigate the contemporary foodscape successfully. The study aims to map the knowledge base and intellectual structure of the concept of food literacy to assess if the most cited definitions reflect these constructs.

The inclusion criteria of full-text, peer-reviewed articles or conference papers, in English, using “food literacy” within the title, abstract, keywords or linked to the research focus produced 538 articles from the Scopus database from its inception until January 31, 2023. Articles were analysed according to exponential growth, geolocations, authors, articles, research areas and keywords using VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Excel.

Food literacy research grew exponentially between 2012 and 2022 at a rate of 50% and spanned 62 research areas, with nutrition and dietetics being the most common. Vidgen and Gallegos were the most cited authors of the most cited article, and Australia was the most influential food literacy research geolocation. Research originating from developing countries within Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America was underrepresented, and COVID-19 impacted research trends between 2020 and 2023.

It is recommended to link “food literacy” to appropriate publications to increase its visibility and that food literacy be redefined and conceptualised to better reflect its intellectual structure. To complete this task, further research guided by keyword clustering can enhance conceptual understanding.

This study provides new insight into the knowledge base and intellectual structure of food literacy and provides scope for future research to develop the concept further.

This chapter is written from the perspective of an experienced middle leader reflecting on what would have been a powerful approach to solving curriculum challenges at the launch of their middle leadership journey. The approach is learning and leading through collaborative inquiry; a process that provides the pathway and direction for a curriculum middle leader (CML) to engage in inquiry to solve a challenge of practice. A CML invests a great deal of time and effort in unpacking and understanding the ‘why’ of a curriculum challenge. This is achieved through unpacking and understanding the ‘how’ which led to the challenge, and thus, strong strategic skills are required. Additionally, effective CMLs do not undertake this work in isolation, rather, they build and facilitate a professional learning community (PLC) (Stoll et al., 2006) of curriculum enthusiasts to undertake this journey with them, which requires substantial relational trust.

Teachers play important roles in school food and nutrition education. This study aims to explore Australian teachers' self-efficacy beliefs (i.e. belief in their own capabilities to perform specific teaching tasks) in teaching secondary school food and nutrition-related subjects.

Teachers' overall self-efficacy beliefs in teaching these subjects (overall-SEB) and self-efficacy beliefs in teaching different food and nutrition-related topics (topics-SEB) were explored using a survey among 183 teachers in 2017. Principal components analysis derived three overall-SEB components: “Motivation and accommodation of individual differences”, “Classroom management” and “Communication and clarification” and three topics-SEB components: “Food system”, “Food and nutrition information” and “Food preparation”.

Overall, higher percentages of teachers were confident or very confident in the majority of items that loaded on “Classroom management” and “Communication and clarification” compared to “Motivation and accommodation of individual differences”. Moreover, higher percentages of teachers were confident or very confident about items that loaded on “Food and nutrition information” and “Food preparation” compared” to “Food system”. The overall-SEB and topics-SEB were higher among more experienced teachers. There were moderate positive correlations between overall-SEB and topics-SEB components.

The exploration of broader aspects of self-efficacy beliefs related to teaching secondary school food and nutrition-related subjects makes this study unique. The findings highlight that these teachers had high self-efficacy beliefs in teaching food and nutrition education, but there are gaps in tailoring the teaching process to meet the diverse needs of students and teaching broader food-related topics.