Using Experiential Learning to Help Students Understand the Impact of Food Insecurity

Background and Purpose: According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is a condition where a household has limited or uncertain access to adequate food. One of the strategies that the Department of Agriculture uses to try to remedy this situation is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The theory of experiential learning suggests that students should have the opportunity to personally understand what it might be like to have a particular experience in addition to reading about an issue in the course text. This theory was used to construct an assignment to assist social work students in better understanding food insecurity and one of the main policies developed to combat this problem. Using qualitative data previously collected for this class assignment, the researchers hypothesized in their study that as the exercise progressed, these students would gain a better understanding of SNAP policy and procedures and a more empathic understanding of individuals and families experiencing food insecurity.

Methods: At a large urban university in the Northeast, the instructor of two first-year Master’s level policy classes assigned students to live under SNAP financial requirements for a week. During this time, students were asked to periodically journal on a shared class Discussion Board about their personal experiences. Each of these Discussion Board submissions was entered into an NVivo software program and, using phenomenology as a guiding method, coded initially by “significant statements” (Creswell, 2013). These significant statements were then collected into what Creswell (2013) refers to as “clusters of meaning” and coded accordingly.

Results: The reoccurring themes that emerged from the researchers’ coding of student writings included increased understanding of the SNAP policy and procedures, personal meal planning and challenges, cheating strategies, experiences of stigma, feelings of empathy for individuals on SNAP, decreased energy and concentration, preoccupation with hunger, and other tangible negative perceptions about being a SNAP recipient. As the exercise progressed, multiple students wrote more about how difficult the requirements were to live by and how the lack of food security and the increase in meal planning negatively affected their emotional, intellectual, and physical well-being.

Conclusions and Implications: Experiential learning assignments such as this one help social work students to better understand the struggles and barriers faced by individuals and families who experience food insecurity. By using the SNAP experiential learning exercise, students were pushed to think outside their comfort zones and place themselves in the shoes of someone who might be quite different from them, someone whom they may be asked to work with one day. The overall goal of this exercise was to help students better serve their clients. More research is needed to understand how educators might improve the experiential learning of the students in the area of food insecurity so that this assignment, and those similar to it, can have a lasting positive effect on future service provision to clients.