CULINARY COMPETENCIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MALAYSIA’S CULINARY EDUCATORS AND INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS

here is the abstract of my Phd proposals;

Culinary program is a formal and structured-career-oriented program, which upon graduation, the participant or culinary graduate is expected to work in a kitchen environment. Then with sufficient training and working experience a person most likely to be conferred with the title “Chef”. There are now as many as 7 institutions offering culinary courses with different principles in teaching and learning of culinary. These many views suit well to reformers suggestion on the next new thing, while on the contrary traditionalists demand on the basic competency (Antun 2008).

The debate on culinary curriculum development continues in tangent as this exciting discipline continues to grow. However there must be certain elements of stages to the formulation and analysis before making any decision or framework apart of emphasize on the selection of content. Similar process is also being offered by Toohey (1999); it clearly indicated that the process of curriculum development shall have several stages starting with establishing the need and ended with program validation. It also mentioned the selection of content as the core elements in any curriculum development. This is not the only model, as other educational experts also suggested similar process which will be further discussed in literature reviews.


The framework of culinary curriculum which is adapted from Hegarthy (2004) suggested that the curriculum should be moving forward because of uncertainty in liberal vocational educational as it requires culinary program to be constantly upgraded to suit the need of the industry and the advancement of technology of hotel and kitchen equipment. The sample derived from culinary program (diploma level) of 4 institutions in Malaysia indicate that vast difference and similar competencies are offered since each institutions has their own philosophy of teaching and learning even though all are known as Diploma in Culinary Arts.

The findings resemblances to the research conducted on the culinary science program by Birdir (2000) that there are 46 knowledge statements, 38 skills and ability statements, and 23 behavioral statements. While Hegarthy (2004) suggested four (4) areas to be included in core area and further supported by Santich (2007) which offer a different perspective in culinary / gastronomy competencies by suggesting 15 orientations.

The significant differences in requirement across program lead to series of questions, what knowledge and skills are most important for future success? And what knowledge and skills will be needed to adapt to trends that are emerging in this area of industry? (Harrington et. a. 2005).

It is therefore, the intellectual challenge for these program, are

1) To understand the changes that are taking place in the new fields and
2) The interaction of changes between them.

Since culinary arts is still considered as a new discipline, retrieving academic articles on the subject proved to be difficult. Hegarthy (2005) argues that culinary arts, culinary science and gastronomy have received little serious scholarlistic attention to date. This is due to the factors such as:

1)Lack of theoretical underpinning that would allow it to become a discipline

2)The difficulty in separating its transitory nature and link with physical work.

3)The industry needs from those of knowledgeable in the subject i.e. science or theory

4)The absence of doctoral scholars in the field – a major defiency in culinary arts and science education

Overcoming the scenarios or rectifying the problems of which competencies to be included in culinary program can only be satisfied by conducting a systematic research. In holistic perspective, the objective of this paper is to further strengthen the framework policy which can be best achieved through re-evaluation by integrating the culinary stakeholders (Antun, 2008).

Rashi Hariri August 2009