A Sociocultural Analysis of Social Interaction and Collaboration Within the Cooking Practices of Children

ABSTRACT

This article applies sociocultural theorizing as a tool to analyze children’s collaborative cooking practices through the key sociocultural concepts of social interaction and collaboration within a school cooking club. The “everyday” activity of cooking is examined using field notes gathered through participant observations, diary entries, and semistructured interviews with child and adult participants. The fieldwork sample included 18 participants age 9 to 11 years and two adult participants. The sociocultural nature of the children’s learning during cooking practices was tracked over a 14-week period. Observed incidences of situated learning, legitimate peripheral participation, and guided participation were tracked throughout the fieldwork period. The analysis identifies the processes through which participants are able to contribute to and distribute shared knowledge. Through tracking the collaborative learning processes and the contrasting pedagogical practices, the research identified the learning trajectory of the “newbies” via legitimate peripheral participation (as observers and silent contributors), and explored how, through fractionally increasing participation, the newbies become main members (masters) of this community of practice. The findings confirm children’s collaborative cooking practices as a lens through which social interaction and collaboration can be examined, while also highlighting the complexity of opposing pedagogical practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• cooking practices
• learning
• participation
• social interaction
• sociocultural