Designing a learning experience

‘’How can collective cooking experiences serve as a pedagogical tool to explore the culinary heritage of a specific dish, such as Sambal, as well as students' own connection with gastronomy, cooking and food systems?’’

Me and Gil Nobre designed a collective cooking project at Mensa Mensa on November 7, aiming to explore collaborative learning, practical knowledge acquisition, and the promotion of communal learning in a post-colonial educational framework. The activity involved participants cooking in groups without recipes, relying on intuition and previous experiences. This setup was designed to investigate collective decision-making and hands-on learning.

The project succeeded in two main areas: it fostered participants' self-reflection on decision-making processes and biases, and it confirmed the effectiveness of collective cooking as a pedagogical tool for practical, sensorial learning. These outcomes align with your theoretical propositions and the literature, supporting the idea of engaged, communal learning as crucial for the envisioned "school for tomorrow."

However, the initiative struggled to achieve its goal of enhancing critical awareness among participants about their consumer roles within a globalized, neo-colonial food system. The intent was to stimulate discussion on socio-political issues related to food consumption, but the overwhelming tasks and time constraints led participants to focus more on the cooking process and organic discussions, sidelining the intended critical discourse.

Our research thus underscores the potential of collective cooking in fostering practical knowledge and collaboration, while also highlighting the challenges of integrating critical socio-political awareness into experiential learning activities. This balance remains a critical consideration for future educational research and practice, especially in developing innovative pedagogical models that address diverse learning needs in a complex global context.