Teaching like a Master(Chef) – Using MasterChef as a model for effective and ineffective lesson design

MasterChef – what is it?

I am sure you are all familiar with the hit BBC show, MasterChef. If not, you are missing out! The show is a competition where people are judged on their ability to cook and one contestant is eliminated each week by the judges, Greg Wallace and John Torode. During the Celebrity MasterChef series, the celebrities have to do a range of tasks and it’s here where I will draw the comparisons between high quality teaching and learning and how MasterChef provides a good and bad model for lesson design.

The technical challenge – a discovery learning approach

There are many stages and challenges in the show and one such challenge is the technical challenge. Australian top chef and expert John selects a dish of his choosing and provides all contestants with the ingredients, a photo of the final dish and generic instructions. The contestants then follow the instructions to the best of their (varied) ability and try to produce the dish to the expectations laid out in the photo. This is then judged by Gregg and John, with very specific feedback provided at the end of the process. The success rate of this stage is around 20%–30% with, on average, only one contestant per episode actually nailing the task to the high expectations of the judges.

In my opinion, there are several parallels between this model of teaching and how I was taught to teach less then 10 years ago. We called it discovery learning and it was actually encouraged. The educationalists reasoning behind this approach was that students learn more from doing than being told and the creative nature of the task will allow the students to develop a greater understanding of the process. I must admit, at the time I thought it sounded like it made sense. I won’t go on about my concerns with discovery learning now, feel free to DM or tweet me for my thoughts.

The low success rate in this challenge highlights the difficulties in minimally guided instruction. But MasterChef shows a completely different side to teaching too.

The restaurant challenge – Me, we, you, you, you…

In the next task, the celebrity contestants had to apply their varied levels of culinary skills to the heat of a working kitchen. They were placed in a professional kitchen, given one dish and had to produce it for a few hours should it be ordered by the paying customers.

As you can imagine, with the restaurant’s reputation in the line, the head chef was very keen to ensure the contestants knew what they were doing and they would be able to learn the new dish quickly and reproduce it perfectly from memory. They quickly become expert teachers.

Firstly, the head chef explicitly showed the contestants how to produce each element of the dish. They did this by modelling each step individually and providing direct instruction throughout, highlighting pitfalls and common misconceptions as they go. They condense their years of learning and expertise to manageable chunks the novice can understand and apply without become confused.

Secondly, the contestant has a go under the watchful eye of the head chef. Feedback is being constantly provided, as well and questions being asked both ways (expert to novice and novice to expert). The dish is completed and head chef confirms that is the standard they expect.

Then, the contestant prepares the dish to order when the restaurant opens for service. They repeat the steps they have been taught minutes earlier over and over and over again. Sometimes over 30 times! Each time they get better and better. The end result…. nearly 100% become successful and proficient in the process and all 100% definitely make progress in their ability to prepare that specific dish.

This, to me, was eye opening. It was a teacher and a student, following a simple strategy, that clearly showed that student was able to achieve things at the end that they thought impossible after the start. Whether they learnt something and if there was a change in long term memory is another question, but they definitely improved. So, what had the head chef done to ensure this improvement had happened?

Here’s why I think this was successful (with references where possible)

Why I think it worked

Here are some of the elements that I will highlight as strength from a teaching perspective:

• Explicit instruction – provided by the expert in real time and done using visual demonstrations and verbal instruction. More info here and book available here by Adam Boxer.
• Me, we, you or I, we, you approach – a way to deliver new content which leads to more successful schema production and encoding to long term memory. Blog available here by Andy Tharby and mentioned in Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College available here by Doug Lemov
• Cognitive Load Theory – Sweller’s CLT is applied in a way that each step was broken down in manageable chunks to avoid cognitive overload. There is loads of reference for this but this book by Oliver Lovell clearly explores this here.
• Guided then independent practice – mentioned in the EEF Metacognition and Self-Regulation report found here.
• Identification of pitfalls and misconception in the teaching process – struggling for a reference for this one so tweet me any suggestions!
• Direct and meaningful feedback – feedback is a much debated topic in education but it is generally agreed that meaningful and timely feedback is essential to learning. See the EEF report here.
• Modelling – reduction of pressure on cognitive load and support for students to build and link schemas. SecEd link here.
• Practice, practice, practice – Mentioned in Tom Sherrington’s book Rosenshine’s Principles In Action available here.
• After being in that environment, the contestants confidence and creativity usually gets a boost because of the rigour of the “teaching”. They then take what they learned there and apply it in new dishes in future challenges, something they almost never do from the technical challenge. This could be linked to the G from MARGE, Generation. For more on MARGE, see Nimish Lads book on Shimamura’s MARGE Model of Learning in Action found here.

Although this analogy isn’t perfect, the contestant’s motivation is clearly a strong influencer on progress and their self-regulation should be impeccable. I do feel as though the basic concept of the transference of information, knowledge and skills still holds and I hope this example/analogy helps to demonstrate the success of these tried and tested pedagogical techniques.

Thank you for reading. Please feel free to leave a comment here, on Twitter or tweet me back at @DrB_SciTeacher. As always, big thanks to all those mentioned in this for sharing their expertise and to @MrTSci409 and Thomas Chillimamp (@TChillimamp) for their expert feedback on this blog!