This proposal is closely linked to my PhD project “Perspectives in Using Taste as a Didactic Element in the Training of Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Competences in the Upper Secondary School”.

The PhD project is designed as a mixed methods intervention study of interdisciplinary teaching in Danish upper secondary school classes. The PhD Project is carried out from sept. 2018 to sept. 2021 within the Department of Educational Sociology at Aarhus University, Denmark, in collaboration with the interdisciplinary research center Taste for Life and the participating upper secondary schools. Hence, close collaboration between researchers and teachers is vital to the completion of the project.

The proposal at ECER will present the first analyses and conclusions from a pilot intervention project, which has been carried through with a second year class at Risskov Gymnasium from nov. 2018 to jan. 2019 to strengthen the methodological design, and to collect the first empirical data. The proposal will focus on data analysis of the student concept mapping, and it will discuss the essential didactic perspectives from the collaboration between researchers and teachers, which have shown vital to the PhD research questions and design.

The PhD project focuses specifically on how taste can be used to train certain disciplinary and interdisciplinary student competences in the interdisciplinary teaching with the subjects of danish and chemistry. The focus of the PhD project is strongly related to the Danish upper secondary school reform 2017, which states interdisciplinary teaching as mandatory and interdisciplinary student competences as vital learning goals. The PhD Project has two main research questions:

1. Which learning effectiveness does the interdisciplinary teaching (with) taste imply? Including:

-        Which realized learning do the students gain from the interdisciplinary teaching?

-        Which self assessed learning do the students regard as having gained from the interdisciplinary teaching?

-        Which self efficacy do the students show from the interdisciplinary teaching?

2. Which didactic explanations of respectively positive and negative learning effectiveness do the interdisciplinary teaching (with) taste lead to?

The PhD project considers taste as a concept with multiple didactic perspectives (Hedegaard 2018, Wistoft & Qvortrup 2018). This is due to the fact that taste is a multisensory process that includes the chemical-physiological senses of the word, e.g. basic tastes, texture, chemical compounds, (Mouritsen & Styrbæk 2017, Prescott 2012) as well as the humanistic and sociological senses of the word, e.g. culture, individual identity, memories, social background, (Bourdieu 2010, Korsmeyer 2018, Leer & Wistoft 2015). The concept of taste is therefore defined as a process that is closely linked to learning, cognition and perception in general (Hedegaard 2018, Korsmeyer 2018, Perullo 2016). Thus taste can be used both as an interdisciplinary topic (to teach taste) where students learn the meanings of taste, and taste can be used as a didactic catalyzer (to teach with taste) where students train their (interdisciplinary) competences by using taste as a learning tool (Wistoft & Qvortrup 2018).

The Interdisciplinary teaching material on taste for the intervention study is composed by upper secondary school teachers in close collaboration with the researchers of Aarhus University and the research center Taste for Life. The PhD project is therefore involving generic as well as domain-specific discussions between researchers and teachers on didactics, teaching and learning on both a theoretical and an empirical basis. Hence, the interdisciplinary teaching on taste is a way of training student competences, as well as a way of strengthening the didactic reflection of the teachers. The PhD project sees this didactic reflection as necessary in an education era of multiple didactic choices and interdisciplinary demands (Hopmann 2007, Künzli 2002, Qvortrup & Krogh 2015).

The Ph.D. project is designed as a sequential mixed methods intervention study using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The mixed methods approach is due to the difficult measurable research questions on learning effectiveness of the students, and didactic explanations related to the positive or negative effectiveness (Creswell 2013). The specific methods used for data collection are student questionnaires, concept maps, assignments, and focus group interviews. These four different methods have complementary strengths considering the three dimensioned research question on student learning effectiveness. All methods and data are referring to the same student population. The design integration of the intervention study is sequential, and a pilot study with a second grade upper secondary school class at Risskov Gymnasium, Aarhus, has been carried out from nov. 2018 to jan. 2019 in order to focus or alter the methods used for the real data collection in approximately 10 upper secondary school classes in the fall semester 2019. Questionnaires are used as a quantitative method investigating the self efficacy and self assessed learning of the students. The questions asked relate to disciplinary and interdisciplinary competences. Questionnaires are carried through as baseline/end line method and have student numbers affixed to them, providing the possibility of individual comparison and integration in the overall data analysis. Concept maps are used as a quantitative and a qualitative method investigating the number of concepts of each student as well as the extent of understanding of taste as an interdisciplinary concept. Frequency analysis, cluster analysis, and qualitative concept map analysis are used (Kinchin, Hay & Adams 2000, Kinchin 2014). Concept maps are carried through as baseline/end line method and also have student numbers affixed to them in order to compare and integrate in the analysis. Semi structured focus group interviews are conducted shortly after the interdisciplinary teaching course. This method is used to derive qualitative explanations of respectively positive and negative effectiveness. The interviews can clarify the analysis of the concept maps, questionnaires, and assigments (Brinkmann 2013). As a conclusion to the course, each student will hand in an interdisciplinary assignment. The student assignments are viewed as unobtrusive measures answering the research question on student realized learning. The assignments will be corrected by the participating teachers according to normal procedure in upper secondary schools. The research analysis of the assignments will be integrated and compared to the concept maps and questionnaires.

The empirical data material from the pilot project (nov. 2018 – jan. 2019) will be analyzed in spring 2019, and the conclusions from this work will be presented at the ECER conference with a focus on the student concept maps, and how these concept maps are used in the quantitative and qualitative data integration analysis. The project expects to find a correlation between certain types of student concept maps and certain levels of student assignments, showing that it is not merely the quantity of conceps in the student concept maps, but the quality of the concept maps that demonstrates the extent of student learning effectiveness. The project also expects to find a connection between the learning effectiveness and the didactic use of taste as a learning tool in the teaching course. The analysis conclusions of the focus group interviews will be presented in this respect. As this proposal primarily presents the conclusions in the early phase of a three-year PhD project, new and unexpected findings from the empirical data will also be a part of the proposal. Finally, the completion of the PhD project as a mixed methods study providing evidence informed education research conclusions is dependent on the collaboration with at least 8 upper secondary school classes and their respective teachers. Hence, the proposal at ECER will give a status of the (didactic) collaboration between researchers and schools of the project.

-Bourdieu, P. (2010): Distinction – A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge Classics, Routledge. -Brinkmann, S. (2013): Qualitative Interviewing. New York: Oxford University Press. -Christensen, J. & Wistoft, Karen (2016): ”Taste as a didactic approach”, International Journal of Home Economics, Vol 1 No 1 2016. -Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage Publications, Incorporated. -Gadamer, H.-G. (2013): Truth and Method. Bloomsbury Academic. -Hedegaard, L (2018). Educated tastes. Studier I Pædagogisk Filosofi, 6(2), 1-14. -Hopmann (2007). “Restrained Teaching: the common core of Didaktik”. In European Educational Research Journal 6(2): 109-124 -Kant, I. (2006): Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge University Press. -Kinchin, Ian M., Hay, David B. and Adams, Alan (2000): “How a qualitative approach to concept map analysis can be used to aid learning by illustrating patterns of conceptual development”. Educational Research, Taylor & Francis, vol. 42, p. 43-57. -Kinchin, Ian M. (2014): “Concept Mapping as a Learning Tool in Higher Education: A Critical Analysis of Recent Reviews”. The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, Volume 62, p. 39-49. -Korsmeyer, C. (2018). TASTE AND OTHER SENSES: RECONSIDERING THE FOUNDATIONS OF AESTHETICS. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 26(54). -Künzli, R. (2002). “The Common Frame and the Places of Didaktik”. In Westbury, I.; Hopmann, S. & Riquarts, K. (red.) Teaching as Reflective Practice: the German Didaktik tradition (s. 63-84). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. -Leer, J. & Wistoft, K. (2015): Mod en smagspædagogik, Smag #02, Smag for Livet. -Mouritsen, O. G. & Styrbæk, K. (2017): Mouthfeel – How Texture Makes Taste. Columbia University Press. -Perullo, N (2016): Taste as Experience – The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Food. Columbia University Press. -Prescott, J. (2012): Taste Matters – Why We Like the Foods We Do, Reaktion Books. -Qvortrup, A. & Krogh, E. (2015): ”Mod laboratorier for sammenlignende didaktik – Almendidaktik og fagdidaktik i den danske uddannelseslandskab, Nordisk Tidsskrift för Allmän Didaktik, Vol. 1, No. 1, oktober 2015, 21-42. -Wistoft, K & Lars Qvortrup (2018): Smagens didaktik. Akademisk forlag. København.