Recipes are not only part of today's cooking culture, they are also part of the Swedish syllabus of home economics. The aim of this study was to investigate what kinds of difficulties students with mild intellectual disabilities have using recipes during cooking lessons in home economics. We conducted an ethnographically inspired approach, with a total of 44 h of accompanying observations. Three compulsory schools for students with intellectual disabilities were enrolled in the study, and 37 students and three teachers were included. The socio‐cultural theory of learning has been used as a theoretical framework. The findings reveal both that recipes are central artefacts during the cooking lessons and that the students have various difficulties using the recipes. The difficulties vary, and they concern both how the recipes are designed and the purport of the recipes. Difficulties in relation to the design included, for example, the separation of ingredients and instructions in the text and the large amount of information given in both the whole and the parts of the recipes. The difficulties in relation to the purport – that is, the meaning or sense of the recipe – were the ingredients, the kitchen utensils and the knowledge of how to perform a specific task. These difficulties can be considered special in relation to the use of the recipes. We suggest the concept of ‘recipe literacy’ to capture the complex knowledge of using recipes.
We examine pre-service teachers' theoretical learning during one five-week training module, and their educators' learning about better lecture design to foster student learning. The study is iterative: interventions (one per group) were implemented sequentially in student groups A-C, the results of the previous intervention serving as the baseline for the design developed for the next. These learning study participants, 79 students from year three of a teacher training programme, studied the variation theory (VT) of learning. Three lesson cycles were completed, each comprising four steps: (1) a pre-test, (2) a 15-min intervention discussing VT, (3) a post-test and (4) a delayed post-test conducted eight weeks later. The results indicated learning differences between groups; qualitative analysis identified three categories of student answers, i.e. emergent, premature and unaware, regarding their theoretical understanding. Group C had more students with emergent knowledge (36%) than did groups A (20%) or B (17%) at post-testing.
The aim of this study was to explore what arithmetical understanding is needed when students with mild intellectual disabilities use recipes during practical cooking lessons in Home Economics.The settings were compulsory schools in Sweden attended by students with intellectual disabilities. Sixteen lessons in Home Economics during which cooking took place were observed. In total, 37 students and three teachers participated. All students had a mild intellectual disability. Their ages varied, but most were between 13 and 14 years old. The sociocultural perspective on learning, combined with a literacy framework, was used as a theoretical foundation for the study. Main findings are that students need an arithmetical understanding of (i) how to interpret numbers, (ii) how to interpret and use units, and (iii) how to compute when using recipes. The knowledge and skills needed to be able to use a recipe are featured in the concept recipe literacy, capturing both theoretical, declarative knowledge and the more practical, procedural knowledge. Recipe literacy can be used to theorize the use of recipes when learning to cook, as in Home Economics.
K E Y W O R D Scooking, home economics, learning, literacy, recipes, socio-cultural theory of learning
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