Aesthetic judgments and meaning-making during cooking in Home and Consumer Studies

• In Swedish home and consumer studies (HCS), cooking forms apart of the core content, and students often experience the results in a sensuous way–by eating the food. Sensuous, or aesthetic, experiences may affect students’ meaning-making and thus what is learned within the subject. There is a lack of research concerning the aesthetic aspects of cooking in a learning context; therefore, this study aims to explore HCS students’ meaning-making by focusing on aesthetic judgments during formalized cooking practices. The research question is, in what ways do students use aesthetic judgments in meaning-making processes during cooking? The data comes from video-documented classroom observations where the students cook together. Using a pragmatic approach and practical epistemology analysis (PEA), three ways in which the students use aesthetic judgments are illustrated: as arguments in negotiations, as reference points when reactualizing experiences, and as nonverbal actions evaluating sensory qualities. Empirical examples exemplify how aesthetic judgments play a role in establishing power relations, entail social/normative values, and influence the “tacit knowing” of cooking. The study found that aesthetic experiences are integral and important in students’ meaning-making during cooking practices. Moreover, by adding a new classroom context to the methodology used, its applicability for investigating aesthetic experiences and meaning-making is confirmed and widened.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

aesthetic judgments

cooking

home and consumer studies

practical epistemology analysis

pragmatic approach

Kostvetenskap

Food, Nutrition and Dietetics

Curriculum Studies

Didaktik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)