Molecular gastronomy in science and cross-curricular education – The case of “Kitchen stories”

The recent years have seen an increased interest in science education aimed towards the nature of science and inquiry. Within this context, promotion of reasoning and argumentation in school science has come forth as an important field of research. The present contribution describes the project "Kitchen stories" which seeks to develop a framework for teaching argumentation and inquiry in a cross-curricular setting comprising science and home economics. The explicit teaching of Toulmin's argumentation pattern is utilised for students to analyse claims, expand them to build complete arguments and plan open-ended inquiry with regards to specifications (i.e. claims) about food and cooking collected from authentic sources in everyday life, herein termed "culinary precisions". This way a holistic teaching framework has been constructed incorporating project work, argumentation, inquiry, second-hand investigations, sourcing skills and declarative knowledge. Preliminary results from the study involving pre-service teacher students in science and home economics are described. Possibilities, challenges and prospects are discussed when using kitchen stories for teaching argumentation, inquiry and other pertinent topics in science education.