Issues in Design and Technology Teaching

Bob Barnes, Jim Morley, Su Sayers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134605323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Issues in Design and Technology Teaching identifies and examines the important concerns in this subject, seeking to challenge preconceptions and stimulate debate about this relative newcomer to the National Curriculum. Key areas addressed are:

• Issues of Definition: getting to the roots of the concept of design and its educational value
• Issues in the Classroom: the role and implementation of new technologies, and issues involved in planning and assessment
• Issues in the School Context: gender as a concern in Design and Technology, with an examination of boys' performance in this area
• Issues Beyond the School: ethics, values and attitudes in Design and Technology, and a discussion of the benefits of partnerships with industry.

Issues in Design and Technology Teaching provides support for student teachers and NQTs in primary and secondary schools, helping them to reach informed judgements about the subject they are teaching.

Part 1

Issues of definition

1 The challenge for design and technology education

Jim Morley

Introduction

The challenges of teaching and learning within design and technology may arguably be regarded as unique within the school curriculum. The educational process deals with an activity that, by the nature of design problems, may be ill-defined at the outset and may lead to a range of varied, and perhaps equally justifiable, ‘finished’ outcomes. In this sense, the challenge for the pupil implies a problem or situation to be addressed, which requires recognition, rationalisation and negotiation of important factors to achieve a resolution. For the teacher, this implies an openness to situations that engage learners in the processes of designing. As Kimbell et al. (1996) have shown, the degree of openness, or otherwise, of learning situations remains one of the most difficult curriculum management challenges for design and technology teachers, and it involves risks for teachers and learners alike.

This chapter seeks to identify the requirements for ‘challenge’ and ‘risk’ in the context of the emergence of a rationale for designing as an indispensable component of design and technology education. It is argued that this has become the central feature of a new ‘practical scholarship’ (a term which I shall use to imply thought in action), changing our aspirations for a practical education to meet the needs of every child living in a modern industrial society.¹

Why has the nature of practical education changed?

For a comprehensive review of the importance of making, and its changing place in the curriculum, the reader should consult Chapter 4 in this book. The issue in this chapter is the emergence of designing as a component of practical education and the rationale for its inclusion in the curriculum for all pupils of compulsory school age. This is particularly important in understanding the purposes of design and technology education for every child, regardless of vocational or career aspirations, and provides the key to understanding the unique challenge that design and technology requires us to address.

Models of practical education in the elementary schools early last century were based upon society’s aspirations for a skilled workforce. These were, for girls: to take up menial, poorly paid employment or become wives and mothers; and for boys: to respond to a perceived collapse in the competitiveness of British industry (Penfold 1988). Practical activities were therefore largely pre-vocational in nature. To some extent developments following the 1944 Education Act, including the establishment of a tripartite system of secondary, technical and grammar schools, could have consolidated the pre-vocational nature of practical work in schools, but technical schools were not set up in sufficient numbers nationally to have a major influence on practical education. Instead, a more common bipartite system of secondary modern and grammar schools became the norm, with practical activities, and particularly those seen to be ‘technical’ in nature, most often confined to secondary modern schools and thereby to pupils of lower ability.

To a large extent pre-vocational intentions were continued by these schools, with woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing for boys, and needlework and home economics for girls. There were, however, an increasing number of teachers who questioned the previously held assumptions ‘that the acquisition of manual skills’, which were seen to be ‘of little direct relevance to the society in which [pupils] were maturing, had to precede educationally more fulfilling goals’ (Penfold 1987: 34).

The developing argument was accelerated throughout the 1960s and early 1970s by futuristic writers such as Alvin Toffler. In his book Future Shock, Toffler advocated education for change, a dynamic approach to education, based on a process that would enable pupils to cope with change confidently, rather than the teaching of specific knowledge and skills, which would soon be obsolete in a rapidly developing, industrial society (Toffler 1971). Although the debate here was not confined to establishing a rationale for the place of practical education in schools, some teachers of practical subjects welcomed his arguments. They recognised the need for a wider role for their subjects, and one which would place them closer to the educational debate about the relevance of what they were doing. Toffler clearly fuelled the debate about the concept of ‘transferable skills’, the role and status of knowledge, and the notion of educational approaches having to be ‘process’ rather than ‘content’ led if they were to be a viable preparation for life in a rapidly changing society – in short, approaches to education which would not become obsolete with changes in scientific and technological knowledge. The challenge to teachers and educationalists was quite different to that presented by a pre-vocational model of education. It was a significant change from the security of identified bodies of knowledge and skills that were thought to be directly useful to pupils moving, most likely (by virtue of the stratified education system of which they were part) into specific technical occupations.

The excitement about the possibilities of an education system designed to cope with the changes of the late twentieth century was consolidated in the 1970s by a group of senior figures from industry, education and the arts, who advocated ‘education for capability’. So sure were they that the traditional approaches to education were in need of fundamental overhaul that leading figures, such as Patrick Nuttgens (an architect), Sir Alex Smith (Director of Manchester Polytechnic) and Andrew Fairburn (Director of Education for Leicestershire), placed prominent advertisements in the national press. These declared their commitment to an education system that should be essentially creative and foster ‘capability’.

What should practical education in the early twenty-first century be like?

Developments in the curriculum

The following section is intended to alert the reader to some of the landmarks that occurred during a key time in the development of the new subject of design and technology.

During the 1960s and 1970s, few teachers looking for a new and more meaningful role within the school curriculum, beyond pre-vocational approaches to education, would have directly identified with the ‘education for capability’ movement. Teachers often advocated an educational justification for their subjects, which was based on the wider values of making and associated with the pride and confidence that come of doing something well.² Cynics might say this challenged teachers’ views of their recognised domains of knowledge and expertise least. Others responded differently to what was more generally and increasingly recognised as the challenge to education posed by a modern industrialised society.

A significant landmark in acknowledging the importance of the cognitive processes of ‘thought and exploration’ in a new model of practical scholarship was reached with the publication of the Crowther Report (1959). As Penfold reported, in a journal article entitled ‘From handicraft to craft design and technology’:

Crowther argued pervasively for an ‘alternative road’ approach to education to enable the country to benefit from the capabilities of all its young people. The report advocated the rehabilitation of the word ‘practical’ in educational circles even though it was aware of its ambiguity: ‘practical’ carrying pejorative overtones, frequently being construed as the opposite of ‘academic’.

(Penfold 1987: 35)

The report strongly refuted such a view and identified the tradition to which the pupil of practical subjects should aspire as ‘… the modern one of the mechanical man whose fingers are the questioning instruments of thought and exploration’ (Ministry of Education, cited in Penfold 1987: 35).

Project Technology

In 1967, the Schools Council declared that the objective of its Project Technology pilot study was ‘… to help all children to get to grips with technology as a major influence in their lives, and as a result, to help more of them to lead effective and satisfying lives’ (Schools Council, cited in Penfold 1987: 37).

As well as producing useful teaching materials, the teams’ activities extended to research programmes that included enquiry into the educational value of technological project work and the development of creativity – activities which, though dependent on practical work, looked beyond the acquisition of knowledge and practical skills. Project Technology was notable for keeping the teaching of technology at the forefront of debate about the role of practical education, despite the resistance with which it was met by many ‘handicraft’ teachers of the time. It was seen by its supporters as a way of dealing with technological issues and problems which could be realised in school workshops.³ In terms of curriculum development, it contributed much to the perception of the relevance of practical activities in schools, and was certainly part of a practical tradition that advocated ‘project-led’ approaches to tasks, rather than project work solely as a means of reinforcing scientific principles (an approach to the teaching of technology which was popular with some science teachers). These initiatives passed to the National Centre for Schools Technology at Trent Polytechnic, and they were influential in the teaching of technology through a ‘systems approach’ which, though acknowledging the importance of ‘content’, used it as a part of a process of education that helped pupils to deal with real problems.

The Keele Project

Despite the success of Project Technology in addressing the new challenges of practical education, what has now become universally known as the Keele Project caught the imagination of many more ‘craft’ teachers. The pilot study, ‘Education through the Use of Materials’, suggested approaches to craft work that combined the teaching of skills with the stimulation of pupils’ own creative ideas (Schools Council 1969). It examined a number of contexts in which this might happen, including ‘recreation’ and ‘design for living’. These were to offer wider relevance to the study of a variety of practical subjects and pupils’ future roles in society.

Perhaps the Keele Project was more attuned to the backgrounds and aspirations of the majority of handicraft teachers of the time and, though clearly advocating a ‘problem-solving’ approach to practical education (a term that was to dominate debate and teaching in initial and in-service teacher education for many years), it was clearly located reassuringly, as declared by the title of the pilot study, in ‘Education through the Use of Materials’. In the summary of the pilot study, entitled ‘Ways Forward’, the report states:

… teachers have realised more clearly that craft skills, although important, are only a contributory factor in pupils’ intellectual and personal development. This development is increasingly seen to be of an individual nature, involving goals with labels such as inventiveness, creativity, and initiative – qualities that are seen as essential for a full occupational, domestic, or leisure role in an advanced industrial society. It is an emphasis on thinking and expression in which knowledge and skill are supportive.

(Schools Council 1969: 33)

Clearly, there is more than an indication here that certain skills were regarded as transferable. Without developing the rationale that would support such a statement, the report nevertheless highlights one of the fundamental challenges to the teacher, and one to which this chapter will return later: ‘For the teacher the difficulty lies in striking a balance between teaching necessary skills and leaving time for the critically important creative use of skill.’ (ibid.).

Developments in design education

The Keele Project was undoubtedly influenced in part by developments in design education. Protagonists of this movement included teachers of art, who did not have the same regard for knowledge and skill that was commonly the source of security for many traditional teachers of handicrafts or technical studies. Some of these teachers were looking for a wider justification for their subject within the context of an industrial society and spurned the notion of art education as an exclusive and talent-centred activity.⁴

Peter Green, who was something of a guru at the time, through his books for teachers and in a paper presented to a conference of the National Association of Design Education, summarised the importance of education in design as follows:

Design Education is not about instilling good taste or buying wisely or making nicer and better things. Design Education is about the impact of Technology and the man-made environment on our lives – and our response. Increasingly we live in a designed, packaged and planned world. The evidence of crucial man-made decisions surround us and determine the nature of our lives. Design Education is about the response to this problem.

(Green 1985: 57)

In highlighting that we have become ‘passive consumers’ of other people’s decisions and increasingly likely to be confronted with more choices made on our behalf, Green advocated the importance of young people experiencing the processes of ‘how decisions are arrived at’ and ‘how we can evaluate and measure their appropriateness’:

This, in formal terms, is what Design Literacy is about. One activity giving such experience is Problem Solving… but we are looking for any activity that allows us to test/exercise our decision making and practical skills – and which gives us the chance to test our decisions.

(Green 1985: 59)

Though there is not a cognitive rationale for the transference of process skills acquired through practical activities, the argument and belief inherent in the statements of design educa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction to the Series
• PART I. Issues of definition
• PART II. Issues in the classroom
• PART III. Issues in the school context
• PART IV. Issues beyond the school
• Index