The Vulnerable Learner: Moving from Middle to Margin in Dietetic Education

Dietetic education, the baccalaureate process of preparing students for professional roles as dietitians, has maintained a rather conservative view of knowledge for its entire existence (over 100 years). Contemporary social problems such as food insecurity, violence against women, homelessness, and child poverty have immediate intersections with nutrition through reduced access to an adequate supply of safe food. I speculate here what might be made possible when dietetic educators consider transdisciplinary knowledges such as feminist science be embraced to disrupt century-old approaches to teaching and learning. Such a transdisciplinary gesture seems important for the dietetic profession, even though such a move might make vulnerable the dietetic educator as learner when knowledges move from the middle to the margin.