Representations of practice dbdc 26 th March 2010

What are we doing in the Commons? Sharing practice, yes. But also … One of the goals of the Commons is to explore ways of (re)presenting practice We’ve already seen some …

Artefacts from the course …

“Overviews”

Concept maps …

Other domains Teaching is not the only domain in which individuals practice the same craft in isolation of each other Other areas have also had to search for (find) ways to share enacted practice by various representations Researchers in separate laboratories write papers and send them to each other

And meet to talk See also: Research talk (

Mending things

Building things

Cooking Some structural analogies to teaching Individually enacted “behind closed doors” – kitchen or classroom Individual, private, practice is rarely documented. There is quite a lot of “public” documentation designed to assist/inform these individual Individuals are then expected to take these more-or- less abstract guidelines and use them in a situated instantiation.

Recipes Variety of purpose (which we’ll ignore for now) Variety of form  Ingredients then method (Isabelle Beeton)  Recipe then summary (Eliza Acton)  Pure chronology (Col. Herbert-Kenny)  Uncommon forms (justbento.com) (Cooking for Engineers)

Isabella Beeton (1863) Separates ingredients from method Adds some context

Eliza Acton (1845) Narrative recipe then summary In effect, addressing the needs of novices & experts in one representational form

Col. Kenny-Herbert (“Wyvern”) (1878) A straightforward chronological narrative. Which means if you follow it chronologically (i.e. you don’t read right through to the end before you begin) you may be nastily surprised

Uncommon form (i) Diagrammatic form presents ingredients on y axis, time on x axis, “action” on the intersection. Good for overview, but practically unusable (in practice). Don’t forget the garnish

Uncommon form (ii) A meal-specific form. “Bento” are Japanese packed lunches of (mostly) cooked food eaten at room temperature. They must be assembled in the morning, when everyone is rushing to leave the house.

Uncommon form (ii) Tells you what to have in the store cupboard (joubisai) Tells you what to have cooked and ready Counts you down to “zero” – into the bag and out of the door With a helpful “halfway” point

So … If recipes – in all their different forms – are constructed to help a remote colleague achieve the same results as you do … Can you write a “recipe” for one of your evaluation strategies?

References Isabella Beeton The Book of Household Management, Jonathan Cape,1863 Eliza Acton Modern Cookery, In All Its Branches: Reduced to a System of Easy Practice, For The use of Private Families, Lea and Blanchard,1845 Col. Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (“Wyvern”) Culinary Jottings for Madras, 1885 (facsimile reproduction, Prospect Books, 1994) Cooking for Engineers, Just Bento no twist twist

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