ABSTRACT
The precise nature of the medical and scientific mock-ups lies in the way both provide occasions for the methodic reproduction of knowledge. Both medicine and science are socially organised ways of furnishing us with stocks of knowledge about the natural world and ways of handling it. Giving away too much involves revealing the stage-management of 'cold' medicine by making explicit the information which would otherwise remain unspoken. As a teaching strategy, 'guided discovery' in one of its forms is difficult to sustain. There are many points at which it can go wrong. Teachers using it need to engage in artful stage-management if they are to bring it off successfully. Garfinkel and Sacks themselves suggest something of the sort in their discussion of glossing practices that they refer to as 'mock-ups' and they refer explicitly to working models as a concrete illustration.
