The Kitchen Stories project - Interdisciplinary network of culinary claims

The text below is an attempt at drawing up a new programme/collaboration/network for exploring claims about food and cooking. Hereby, we make an effort to start a new international and interdisciplinary network to explore such claims from various angles. If you are a researcher (from any field), teacher at any level, chef or something else and find this interesting, read on and feel free to contact us. The programme is drawn out by researchers from Finland (here and here) and myself.

Update 2nd June 2015: This is also described in a paper in the scientific journal Flavour. Fooladi & Hopia (2013). Culinary precisions as a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue. Flavour, 2(6). (open access)

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Is it true that you mustn't rinse, but rather brush, mushrooms? Should a steak be seared to keep the juices inside? Can you prevent fruit salad from turning brown by sprinkling it with lemon juice? Such apparently mundane questions have been source of inspiration for food geeks at least since “The Curious cook” by Harold McGee (1990) was published, but most likely much earlier. A closer analysis of such questions reveal an abundance of intriguing, surprisingly complex and unexplored questions which might be vehicles for education and even subject for research within natural and social sciences.

The world of food and cooking is full of statements on how to do things and occasionally why one should adhere to these advices. Many are rooted in tradition or are created today by us all and sometimes appear to us like modern urban stories. Some are rooted in long experience of kitchen professionals or home cooks, and some even in science. When tradition and science meet interesting things might happen. In some cases the phenomenon in question (see examples in the introduction) is well described within one field of science but is less so in another discipline, laying questions open for research. Secondly, such culinary claims, which we have termed “Kitchen stories”, provide valuable opportunities in education at various levels (see below). Thirdly, interesting questions might be revealed by laypeople, craftsmen (chefs, artisans) or even school children which in turn could end up as relevant research topics to be studied within various sciences. Finally, such kitchen stories are valuable parts of our cultural heritage and provide rich research material for scientific fields such as cultural history and sociology (see figure).

Enlightening video lecture on argumentation at Penn State University

Twice a semester Pennsylvania State University holds its Ed Waterbury Lecture on science, technology, mathematics, engineering and mathematics education. This autumn, one of my main sources of inspiration concerning argumentation in science was the invited lecturer.

Prof. Sibel Erduran from University of Bristol is a renown researcher, author and lecturer in fields such as science education, argumentation in science education and philosophy of chemistry. Her contribution to a seminar at the University of Oslo a few years ago was the starting point of my interest in argumentation in science education. In fact, this was the main impulse for me getting involved in what we now call "the Kitchen stories project" (see below).

Her 1 hr lecture + Q/A session at Penn State University was on the topic of argumentation in education (mainly middle school) and professional development of teachers, titled "Modeling Epistemic Practices in Teachers' Learning: The case of argumentation". This lecture is available on the university's web pages (open access, hopefully online for a long time).

Sibel Erduran: "Modeling Epistemic Practices in Teachers' Learning: The case of argumentation"

"Culinary precisions" and/or "Kitchen stories" at science education conference

Last week, I attended the IOSTE XIV symposium. The topic of my presentation was a follow-up of three previous blogposts on culinary precisions: a framework on teaching "nature of science" (argumentation and inquiry) using culinary precisions.

The biannual conference was hosted by IOSTE, the International Organization for Science and Technology Education. It involved more than 200 participants from 47(?) countries from all continents, located in the beautiful Slovene town of Bled. A true pearl.

BACKGROUND

A year ago I wrote three posts on these matters, and these are the background for an exciting new collaboration with researchers from Finland (links below). The posts were:

- Culinary precisions part 1:3. Collecting statements about food and cooking

- Culinary precisions part 2:3. Analysing statements about food and cooking

- Culinary precisions part 3:3. Students as "culinary mythbusters"

Culinary precisions, part 3:3. Students as "culinary mythbusters"

Among the challenges in science education are creating quality inquiry-based teaching methods as well as promoting students' argumentation skills. Both these topics might be seen as parts of what goes as "the nature of science". In this last post of three, I argue that statements about food and cooking might be an excellent starting point for learning argumentation as well as inquiry, as well as content knowledge, while dealing with real-life problems with meaningful purposes.

The two first posts:

• Culinary precisions part 1:3. Collecting statements about food and cooking
• Culinary precisions part 2:3. Analysing statements about food and cooking

In part 1, I suggest that there might be a good idea to collect statements about food and cooking (culinary precisions) in an open database, whereas part 2 argues for the use of argumentation patterns in the analysis of such statements. For explanation of the term "culinary precisions", see part 1.

Background; challenges in science education

There is abundant literature, as well as political signals, that point to the need for development of fresh approaches to science education, not the least because of an alarmingly low interest in science and mathematics. Furthermore, the last years have seen a need to shift towards a science education in which "the nature of science" is taught as well as content knowledge; students at all levels should gain experience with scientific inquiry, argumentation etc. There are of course numerous ways this challenge might be taken on.

One problem when it comes to inquiry and argumentation is to find experiments, topics and investigations which are open-ended real-life problems. It's not very exciting to do "inquiry" if you know that the teacher has got the answer in his/her drawer. But what if the thing you were analysing, discussing and experimenting was a real problem? And even more, that others, such as a scientist or the general public, would be interested in the result you came up with? Such scenarios do exist (such as sustain.no, which in fact is a database), but I feel pretty confident that there is need for a range of such approaches, covering various topics.

Culinary precisions, part 2:3. Analysing statements about food and cooking

Statements on what to do, how to do it, and occasionally why to do so, are abundant in the world of food and cooking. This is the second post of three, and deals with a rationale for analysing such statements. The third post will deal with the potential of using this for educational purposes, both in science and food disciplines.

In the first post, I wished for, and tried to give good reasons for building a database of statements on food and cooking (culinary precisions). For an introduction and definition of culinary precisions, see part 1.

The two other posts:

• Culinary precisions part 1:3. Collecting statements about food and cooking
• Culinary precisions part 3:3. Students as "culinary mythbusters"

Culinary precision = claim
A culinary presicion is a statement about something related to food or cooking, such as

• "sprinkle lemon juice on sliced apples/pears, and the fruit will not go brown"
• "you should avoid piercing meat as the juice will flow out resulting in a drier piece of meat"
• "you should cut off the ends of a roast before putting it in the oven"
• "when canning fruit in glass jars, the jar must be stored upside down"

Some precisions contain reason(s) for why one should follow them, others give a consequence that might occur if you don't follow the advice given. During a course on argumentation in science education, I realised that culinary precisions might indeed be considered to be claims. Occasionally, these claims have some data or warrants to explain why you should follow the advice given, and sometimes they don't (first case: "if you do A, B will happen", second case: "do this"). Hence, we are in the domain of arguments.

A system for analysing statements, claims and arguments
For analysis, understanding and testing such culinary precisions, it'd be good to have some coherent system or scheme to fit it into. Argumentation theory has struggled with the analysis of claims and arguments all the way back to Aristotle (and probably earlier). However, the "traditional" (syllogistic / syllogism) way of analysing an argument does only work for a certain type of arguments, and often fail to incorporate all aspects of real-life problems and discussions. Hence, other perspectives on logical arguments have appeared. Among these is the one presented by philosopher Stephen Toulmin. The Toulmin argumentation pattern is a way of organising, analysing and visualising practical real-life arguments, and is often shown in a diagram:

Toulmin's argumentation pattern (click for larger image)