With an increasingly regulated world and in certain work contexts, a never ending requirement to meet CPD criteria, there is the temptation to create a generic coverall to tick the necessary boxes.  When it comes to learning and development, this can lead to a somewhat bland recipe for an even blander pedagogic cake.  The title of this entry is an adaptation of a narrative interview undertaken as part of my doctoral research study…where the collaborator I was interviewing called for a ‘peppering of the cake’.  To not acknowledge the individual learner, to not make the recipe relevant to those partaking in the metaphoric eating, to not consider culture, race, age, gender and any other demographic, is to offer plain sponge to everyone….like it or not.  Of course, in the said regulated context, the main ingredients need to address the compulsory checklist but once that is covered, it’s important to add flavour.  To spice it up a bit.  If the pedagogic cake is bland, or dry….then it will not really feed the participants.  In reality, if participants are not fed, they will not retain what they have ‘learned’.  It’s natural that if we are served bland food, we may go through the motions of eating….so we don’t starve (replace with lose job/not reach targets/not make promotion/not gain qualification and so on) but we aren’t really eating.  We aren’t relating the learning to practice, to our lives….in fact, the learning is so far removed from our lives that we are barely attached to it.  Anyhow, you get my drift.  Bespoke, person centred, spiced-up-pepper-cake is the speciality of ConsultAChameleon.  And of course, we also do a commendable Madeira.