Nutritional Science, Dietitians, Educators Venture Across Borders

Raising Awareness About Nutrition and

Health Issues Through Story and the Arts

Food for Thought

Jacqui Gingras was trained in a positivist tradition

but found her dietitian's training did not prepare

her for comments like,

"I hate my body! I won't eat that. It has too much fat.

I'm overwhelmed. I don't want to be here. I want to die."

Jacqui Gingris Ph.D., RD is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson

University's School of Nutrition and her research engages

autoethnographic, phenomenological and arts informed methods

as helpful approaches in understanding dietetic theory,

education and practice. The winner of the Ted Aoki Prize

for Outstanding Dissertation in Curriculum Studies

courageously ventured across traditional borders to

offer a progressive course for students at Ryerson called

"The Art of Storytelling Advances in Nutrition

Counselling Practice."

"The main text (story) used in this course

is an autoethnographic fiction written by

the instructor about dietetic students/practitioners,

education, and practice called, "Longing for Recognition."

This story will ideally provoke critical thinking about

food and nutrition practice and position storytelling

as a powerful medium to understand others with

whom the student will engage during her/his own

nutrition counselling practice. "2.

1. Quote from Gingras, Jacqueline R. Unkept Promises, Secrets

and Perils Within Dietetic Education and Practice, thesis Feb. 06

Visit www.ryerson.ca/~jgingras

2. From http://www.ryerson.ca/~jgingras/teaching.htm

And in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The

University of Toronto a new pilot arts module was

introduced to graduate students in order to help explore

the arts as a means of raising awareness about food

and community health issues.

Ann Fox Ph.D., MHSc, RD developed the arts module

which was incorporated into the existing nutrition

program to determine how the arts could be used

in nutrition education.

Many arts based approached were used

such as using photo essays to explore urban

landscape related to physical activity, collage,

painting and poetry approaches..

Ann Fox reports, "for both the students and for me

the engagement of dimensions that often

remain untapped in conventional science-based

health studies contributed significantly to our

shared sense of discovery...Student feedback,

as well as my own reflection throughout, indicated

that the module was successful, not just in terms of

meeting the intended objectives, but also in

inspiring students to think and learn in different

ways."

For article "Giving Voice to My Own Astonishment"
by Jacqui Gingras, PhD. RD.
(New Paradigms in Nutritional Sciences)
see CCAHTE Journal, March 07,
http://www.cmclean.com, pg. 12

For the full article "Implementing a Pilot

Arts Module in Graduate Community Nutrition

Training" by Ann Fox see CCAHTE Journal, March 07

issue http://www.cmclean.com, pg. 13.

Professional Dancer as Nurse Embarks on Scientific and Humanistic Inquiry

"It never occurred to me on concluding my career as a performer and teacher with The Toronto Dance Theatre that I would be able to integrate my experiences and skills as an artist into my life as a nurse. However, as a graduate student in nursing it is becoming increasingly evident that I have entered into an interstitial space that holds possibility and opportunities to rethink human embodiment."

We include a brief excerpt below from the paper "The Nurse's Foot: a Phenomenological Exploration" as published in CCAHTE Journal, March 2007, written by Coralee McLaren, BScN

"No longer separating the nurse from the dancer, I am embarking on a scientific and humanistic inquiry to reconceptualize how children with cerebral palsy experience their bodies and movement through space. In preparation for this challenge, I engage here in a concentrated phenomenological exercise that demands a presencing and attuning to my own physical world through the reuniting of my "old body" (F. Wynn, 2006) with the 'thing' that occupied my life as a professional modern dancer, the floor under my foot. What follows (in the paper) are my words and thoughts as I attempt to describe the reacquaintance of my nurse's foot with this 'thing', the floor. With the guidance of others who have undertaken similar experiments, I welcome the opportunity to return to an artistic sensibility that reveals my dancer/nurse body's need for repair and repose, and re-attunes me not only to how I experience my own physicality, but how I might appreciate the bodily experiences of others."

"...By composing a research study that integrates experiences in dance/choreography, pediatric neurosurgical nursing and qualitative phenomenological methods, I hope to extend the boundaries of existing knowledge about children with disabilities and possibly use this new knowledge to design clinical psychosocial, technological and place-based interventions to improve their quality of life and enhance their ways of being in the world."

Coralee McLaren, BScN

Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto

from: "The Nurse's Foot: A Phenomenological Exploration"

published in CCAHTE, The Canadian Creative Arts in Health, Training and Education Journal

March 2007 issue.

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

CCAHTE subscribers can access complete March issue and the full article free at http://www.cmclean.com/

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