Representations of practice hcidc 7 th March 2008.

Representations of practice

hcidc7th March 2008

What are we doing in the Commons?

• Sharing practice, yes. But also …

• One of the goals of this Commons is to explore ways of (re)presenting practice

• We’ve already seen some …

As embodied in artefacts … both naturally occurring

As embodied in artefacts … both naturally occurringand selected/constructed

As externalised in concept maps …

Or presented as narratives …

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

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk)

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 form (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

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 forgetthe garnish

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, http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/200/Osso-Buco

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