It's recounted in Brown, Collins, & Duguid's Ed Researcher article but I
believe you'll find it in her 1988 book Cognition in Practice. List'ers
have I got that right?
Anyhow... it goes something like this... Weight Watchers person needs to
measure 3/4 cup of cottage cheese. This is an educated person who might
have done what we all learned in home ec. or chem. (wow, there's some
different context) about displacement as a measurement tool. Right? You
might fill a measuring cup with a cup of water and plop in the cottage
cheese til the marker registers 1 3/4 cup. Drain out the water, et voila.
Or, you could shove it into a quarter cup measuring cup, pack it down with
a knife, and then scrape it out three times. But the JPF (just plain folks)
did it this way: smear a cup of cottage cheese on the cutting board into a
circular shape. Mark it in fourths with a knife; scrape up three of those
fourths. The tools of the eating activity were far more compelling than
other formal choices for measuring that we all have learned elsewhere.
>>I've never thought of higher mathematics as something one learned because
>>it was useful in one's career or home repair. Most people (adults) that I
>>catch engaged in functional mathematical activities are relying on systems
>>that are strange hybrids of school-math and Lave-ian task-based tools (I'm
>>thinking of the famous cottage cheese example).
>
>
>O.K. I have to know--what is the famous cottage cheese example?
>
>mary jo powell
><mpowell who-is-at sedl.org>
>Austin TX