Drawing Out Ideas: Graphicacy and Young Children

Drawing offers a powerful mode for representing and clarifying one‘s own thinking and for communicating ideas to others. Young children instinctively use drawing in the same exploratory way that designers use sketching to ’converse with themselves‘ when generating ideas. The two distinctive traditions of drawing in Technology and Fine Art are replicated in the Design and Technology and Art and Design curricula in England and Wales. However, because we lack research evidence about (i) the processes by which children develop drawing capability and (ii) the effects of school culture and pedagogy on the development of children‘s drawing capability, teachers are confused about how to teach drawing and unsure about the role of graphicacy in promoting children‘s learning in both subjects. In this article the particular dilemmas of teaching design drawing to young children will be discussed. A research agenda for the teaching and learning of drawing in primary schools will be outlined. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teacher Perceptions of Design and Technology: A Study of Disjunction between Policy and Practice

This study examines the curriculum directions being charted by a sample of county secondary school design and technology teachers in England and Wales. The purposes of design and technology are analysed, and the syllabuses and examinations used reviewed, together with how design folios are incorporated into teaching. In addition, teacher reports on student-teacher classroom performance, and student-teacher evaluations of their teaching practice experiences are analysed. It was found that teacher perceptions are highly pragmatic and technical, with the pupils‘ intended learning outcomes largely being defined instrumentally in terms of product output rather than in design process terms. A disjunction is found between the statutory Order on Design and Technology and its implementation, with many teachers ’constructing‘ their design and technology education programmes within a ’craft paradigm‘. The discussion offers possible explanations for this and concludes that it has as much to do with the perceived status of Design and Technology as a school subject as with a ’product – process‘ debate. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Metaphor and pedagogy in the design practicum

This paper discusses the ways in which the long-established tradition of the design ‘practicum’ continues to structure teaching and learning in undergraduate programmes. It draws on an in-depth empirical study of one degree course in graphic design and accompanying research in a small number of professional graphic design studios; this dual focus enables identification of shared practices and discourses across the two contexts. Examination of its distinctive modes of teaching and learning indicates the effectiveness of practicum pedagogy in promoting design understanding and the professional preparation of students. The study’s insights into the design classroom are illuminated by situated theories of learning, particularly the idea that knowing equates to participation in the specialist knowledge community of graphic design. A key feature of the learning situation is identified as the practicum discourse shared by tutors and learners, which is characterized as metaphor-based rather than analytical and abstract. The strengths and limitations of this practice-oriented discourse are discussed in the light of the recognized difficulties in articulating art and design knowledge, and its consequent problematic status in the academy. The paper’s focus on metaphorical discourse offers a different view of design pedagogy, and suggests a means of researching it that may also be relevant to other practice-oriented domains.     

The Role of Published Materials in Curriculum Development and Implementation for Secondary School Design and Technology in England and Wales

This paper discusses the ways in which teachers exploited a set of curriculum materials published as a vehicle for curriculum innovation, and the relationship between chosen modes of exploitation and teachers’ own perceptions of how the materials had ’added value’ to their teaching. The materials in question were developed by the Nuffield Design and Technology Project (’the Project’) to offer a pedagogy appropriate to the statutory curriculum for secondary school design and technology education in England and Wales (DFE/WO 1995). The Project had sought both to inform the statutory curriculum, and respond to its requirements. An earlier case study (Givens 1997) laid the foundations for the survey that is reported here. This paper focuses on the teaching of pupils aged 11–14. It finds that while most teachers made at least some use of all the various components of the publications, they were selective. While the Study Guide, which carries out a meta-cognitive dialogue with pupils, was generally underused, those teachers who did use it perceived greater value added by the materials as a whole to the quality of pupils’ work, their effectiveness in design and technology and their autonomy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The social agenda of education for sustainable development within design & technology: the case of the Sustainable Design Award

The paper explores the adoption of the social dimensions of sustainability in technological design tasks. It uses a lens which contrasts education for sustainability as ‘a frame of mind’ with an attempt to bridge a ‘value-action gap’. This lens is used to analyse the effectiveness of the Sustainable Design Award, an intervention in post-16 technology education in three countries to encourage students and teachers to strengthen design for sustainability in their work. In each country, the intervention project provided varying combinations of teacher professional development, provision of learning resources, in school student support, lobbying of key curriculum policy makers and a student Award. Three types of teacher are identified by reference to their motivation for introducing sustainability into their teaching of design. These teacher types are linked to a hierarchy of teachers’ understanding of the social dimension of sustainability. The consequences for continuous professional development are examined. The findings are then used to critique the value of the lens.     

Using ‘Electronic Portfolios’ to Challenge Current Orthodoxies in the Presentation of an Initial Teacher Training Design and Technology Activity

The paper examines the extent to which a University undergraduate curriculum initiative provided initial teacher trainees with opportunities to challenge orthodox design methodologies through the production of an electronic portfolio within and extended design and technology activity. It was found that the ‘electronic portfolio’ served primarily as a developmental tool for promoting creative continuity and sound, reflective, design practice within a structured educational design challenge. The portfolio also provided a focus for the development of ‘e’ learning skills as it facilitated the use of new technologies in the compilation of the portfolio. Additionally, the portfolio provided trainees with a means by which they were able to demonstrate their capability to prospective employers. The use of the ‘electronic portfolio’ challenges current orthodoxy and methods routinely employed to present and assess trainees’ creative work, which have been shown to constrain innovative practice. The paper concludes that the use of the ‘electronic’ portfolio was successful in facilitating trainees’ engagement with a creative Design and Technology process.     

Comparisons and Contrasts Between Elementary/Primary ’School Situated Design’ and ’Workplace Design’ in Canada and England

There is a lack of evidence that examines, together, the triad of how teachers in elementary/primary schools are translating curriculum requirements for teaching design, within technology frameworks, in their classrooms, how their students then proceed with design, and how ’school situated design’ relates to ’workplace design’. This paper explores the relationships between designerly thinking and behaviours situated in classrooms and in the workplace, beliefs about how designing is learned in schools and in the ’real world’, and children’s, teachers’ and designers’ understanding of design. These are be illustrated by extracts from interviews with teachers, children and designers and evidence of designing in classrooms and in the workplace. Similarities and differences between evidence from ’school situated design’ and ’workplace design’ and from Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) are discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Assessing scientific and technological enquiry skills at age 11 using the e-scape system

This article reports on the outcomes from the e-scape Primary Scientific and Technological Understanding Assessment Project (2009–2010), which aimed to support primary teachers in developing valid portfolio-based tasks to assess pupils’ scientific and technological enquiry skills at age 11. This was part of the wider ‘e-scape’ project (2003-present), which has developed an innovative controlled alternative to design & technology and science public assessment at age 16. Teachers from eight primary schools were trained in the use of an online task-authoring tool to develop and trial assessment activities based on current classroom work. To compile their e-portfolios of assessment evidence, pupils used netbook devices, which afford multi-modal responses (text, drawing, photo, audio, video, spreadsheet) whilst leaving space on pupils’ tables for practical investigations. Once the pupil e-portfolios had been uploaded to the secure e-scape website, teachers assessed them using a ‘comparative judgement’ approach to produce a rank order with a high reliability coefficient. Participant teachers recognised the strength of the e-scape approach in terms of facilitating and managing pupils’ responses to assessment tasks in the classroom, which they successfully adapted to suit primary pedagogy. In particular, the benefits of scaffolding complex assessment tasks through the step-wise e-scape process in the authoring tool represented for some of the teachers a pedagogically significant development in terms of their planning.     

DEPTH–developing professional thinking for Finnish technology teachers

The Finnish case contributing to the international DEPTH study was carried out within the Technology Education NOW! project at the University of Oulu. Nineteen project teachers participated in the study. The recent revision of the Finnish Basic Education Curriculum with the introduction of the cross-curricular theme “Humans and Technology” provided the contextual framework for the study. The graphic tool called the ‘DEPTH tool’ was introduced to the teachers to help and support them in their professional thinking of their technology teaching in this period of transition. Qualitative research methods were employed in the study. The teachers’ responses to the study indicate that it was appropriate and helped them to make sense of the situation. The DEPTH tool appeared to work well with most of the teachers. Even though some of the teachers used the tool to present a list of activities they have carried out in their technology teaching, most of them understood that they could use the tool in a deeper way to enhance their professional reflection. Five categories of teachers emerged from the data. The categories indicate different aspects and levels of teachers’ professional reflection, especially in relation to curriculum revision and the cross-curricular theme Humans and Technology. Interestingly, some of the teachers who showed a thoughtful level of reflection did not pay very much attention to the revised curriculum.     

DEPTH2: developing professional knowledge in D&T secondary initial teacher education

There are various aspects to teachers’ professional knowledge, some such as subject knowledge are more easy to articulate than others, for example knowing how to construct a scheme of work. Student teachers need to be able to understand the various aspects of teachers’ professional knowledge in order to be able to help themselves reflect on and develop these various aspects. This research builds on earlier work conducted with design and technology colleagues in a number of different countries and teacher training institutions (see Banks et al., International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 14, 141–157, 2004). Leach and Banks, together with other colleagues, developed a visual tool for discussing the aspects of professional knowledge that student teachers are required to develop and this formed the basis of this research (Leach and Banks, Investigating the developing ‘Teacher Professional Knowledge’ of student teachers, 1996). The research was carried out with a cohort of 1-year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students on a conventional face-to-face programme. There were 11 in the group with six male and five female and the majority were aged under 25; this is atypical of this course both for gender and age, but this constituted the 2004–2005 intake. There were three data collection points: September 2004, on their first day of their course; January 2005 following their first school placement and June 2005 at the end of the course. The findings indicate the students’ development across the PGCE course in each of the areas relating to knowledge of subject, pedagogy and school. In each area there is a growth in their knowledge and a development in the complexity of their understanding. The students’ knowledge developed from a generalised understanding to a more specific and sophisticated one. It is hoped to be able to continue this research during the induction year of each successful student.     

A ‘Knowledge Trading Game’ for collaborative design learning in an architectural design studio

Knowledge-sharing and resource exchange are the key to the success of collaborative design learning. In an architectural design studio, design knowledge entails learning efforts that need to accumulate and recombine dispersed and complementary pieces of knowledge. In this research, firstly, ‘Knowledge Trading Game’ is proposed to be a way for promoting students’ design knowledge exchange, dissemination and refinement. Twelve students are randomly chosen as experimental participants. And secondly, ‘virtual value’ is used for students to trade their design knowledge. In this game, students buy others’ design knowledge to extend their design problem space; students decrease their design solution space through their sold design knowledge. Finally, ‘protocol analysis’ is adapted as the research methodology to examine the results of implementation. A positive outcome is identified that Knowledge Trading Game encourages collaborative design learning.     

Positioning industrial design students to operate at the ‘fuzzy front end’: investigating a new arena of university design education

This paper describes pedagogic research to instigate, support and understand a significant change in the education of undergraduate industrial design students. Design educators at Loughborough University, UK, have proposed that it will be critical for future industrial designers to learn new knowledge and abilities which will enable them to successfully operate at the ‘fuzzy front end’ of new product development. This is an arena before a traditional design brief exists (i.e. ‘pre-brief’), and typically involves in-depth investigation of such issues as users, experiences and brand, followed by exploitation of the findings. Curriculum development and new teaching, evolved over five annual cycles of implementation, reflection, planning and new implementation, is described. A model of the activities and processes of this ‘pre-brief’ arena is presented. Through structured investigation of the cycles of improvement and follow-up evaluation research, evidence gathered from stakeholders (students, educators, and industry) indicates that industrial design students can be taught to successfully operate at this fuzzy front end, and that this can be a highly effective strategy for students in their design project work. It also suggests that the students’ enhanced abilities will be in demand following their graduation.     

Can twenty years of technology education assist ‘grass roots’ syllabus implementation?

Teachers’ informed acceptance of challenges associated with teaching technology might ensure the successful implementation of a Technology syllabus in primary schools. They must be prepared to analyse their own understandings of technology concepts and processes, teaching and resource needs, and engage in professional development activities designed to meet their needs. This paper investigates the introduction of a new Technology syllabus into a school and draws on a number of data sources, for example, surveys, interviews with individual teachers, classroom observations, and field notes. It was evident that very specific personal and classroom related issues (e.g., content and pedagogy), and broader issues related to the school and wider communities (e.g., resources and networking), impacted on teachers’ acceptance of the syllabus. Based on these findings, the influence of 20 years of technology education and associated research on the essentials of classroom syllabus implementation by teachers is evaluated. Ways of making this store of knowledge and expertise more meaningful and accessible for teachers are explored.     

Developing the Teaching of Food Technology in Primary Schools in England through Curriculum Development and Initial Teacher Education

This paper investigates developments in the teaching of food technology introduced as an element of design & technology in the 1990 National Curriculum for Technology in the English primary curriculum for children aged five to eleven years. It reviews briefly the situation for food teaching before 1990 and identifies a number of relevant issues. This is followed by an overview of developments in food technology in primary schools between 1992 and 2001, highlighting the need for primary teachers and trainee teachers on initial teacher education courses to develop an understanding of how to teach food technology in their schools. The development of teaching materials through the Nuffield Approach to food technology in primary schools is outlined together with a case study of the use of the materials in initial teacher education at the University of Surrey Roehampton. The paper describes the uptake of Nuffield Primary food technology materials as measured by down loads from the Nuffield Primary Design & Technology web site. Alongside this, there are reflections of primary trainee teachers on the impact of using the Nuffield food technology materials on their classroom practice during school experience. It concludes with a discussion of the key issues arising from the paper and suggestions for future research. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Promoting student-led science and technology projects in elementary teacher education: entry into core pedagogical practices through technological design

Future elementary school teachers often lack self-efficacy for teaching science and technology. They are particularly anxious about encouraging children to carry-out student-directed, open-ended scientific inquiry and/or technological design projects. Moreover, because this often also is the case with practising elementary school teachers, it is difficult for student–teachers to gain practical experience facilitating student-led project work during practicum sessions. To provide student–teachers with expertise and motivation for promoting student-directed, open-ended project work, therefore, a group of future elementary teachers were taken through a constructivism-informed ‘apprenticeship’ during their university-based teaching methods course and then invited to make project work the subject of the action research that they were required to complete during their practicum. In this paper, successes that one student–teacher (out of 78 studied) experienced in promoting student-directed, open-ended technological design projects are reported. Although she judged children’s designs to be modestly successful, data indicate that her self-efficacy for promoting project work increased significantly. Analyses of qualitative data collected during the methods course and practicum also indicate that aspects of the curriculum, teachers, students and milieu appeared to contribute to this success. Such findings suggest that teacher educators should focus on helping future elementary teachers to develop expertise and motivation that would enable and encourage children to conduct technological design projects before conducting scientific inquiries. Such a tack may be the most pragmatic—and, arguably, epistemologically-sound—approach for helping ‘science- and technology-phobic’ student–teachers to move from the periphery to the core of practices in science and technology education.     

Technology and Design, at Key Stage 3, within the Northern Ireland curriculum: teachers’ perceptions

Technology and Design was introduced at Key Stage 3 for all pupils in Northern Ireland, as a result of the Education Reform (NI) Order in 1989. Central to the process of introducing this new and compulsory subject, the government spent in excess of ￡167M to make provision for the subject in all post-primary schools. This paper explores the perceptions of teachers of Technology and Design (known as Design and Technology in GB) in post-primary schools throughout Northern Ireland to the introduction and implementation of the subject. The methods involved a questionnaire survey to all teachers of Technology and Design throughout Northern Ireland (n = 587) and one-to-one interviews with 24. Findings suggest that teachers consider Technology and Design to be a worthwhile subject and believe that it adds much to the educational experience of the pupils involved. Nonetheless, there is general acceptance that difficulties surround the whole issue of subject definition and content delineation. As a consequence, significant demands are placed upon these teachers as they work to ensure that all pupils are given a worthwhile and valuable learning experience. These findings are discussed in terms of teachers’ perceptions of subject definition, delineation of subject content, the nature of the work involved and issues related to academic ability.     

ASIT—a problem solving strategy for education and eco-friendly sustainable design

There is growing recognition of the role teaching and learning experiences in technology education can contribute to Education for Sustainable Development. It appears, however, that in the Technology Education classroom little or no change has been achieved to the practice of designing and problem solving strategies oriented towards sustainable design. Brainstorming, Brainwriting, SCAMPER, Metaphoric Thinking, Outrageous Thinking, Mind Mapping and other problem-solving strategies used in the classroom could be suitable for eco-design, however, there appears to be little research data on their use. This paper examines and presents the ‘Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking’ (ASIT) system as an eco-design strategy. ASIT is derived from a more complex engineering-based problem solving strategy known as TRIZ (the Russian acronym for The Theory of the Solution of Inventive Problems). Drawing on Stable’s (in press) call for new approaches to address sustainable design and achieve solutions through Technology Education, this article traces the history of TRIZ and the development of ASIT. It then argues that the ASIT strategy can be an effective methodology to be taught and used in the Technology Education classroom to solve problems in the ‘eco’ or sustainable design context. Several design scenarios have been included to illustrate how ASIT can deliver eco-design solutions to problems. These examples demonstrate the flexibility of the methodology and the diverse range of applications in which ASIT can be applied.     

Assessing creative thinking in design-based learning

Infusing creative thinking competence through the design process of authentic projects requires not only changing the teaching methods and learning environment, but also adopting new assessment methods, such as portfolio assessment. The participants in this study were 128 high school pupils who have studied MECHATRONICS from 10th to 12th grades (16–18 years old). By the end of 12th grade, the pupils had created 57 authentic projects. The intervention program had two parts: first, the pupils documented their project according to a creative design process that had been introduced to them. Second, the projects were assessed according to a creative thinking scale. This scale was designed to assist pupils in documenting the design process. It could be used as a guideline for teachers and pupils during the course of the project. The research examined pupils’ performance during project-based learning. The research tools included: observations of class activities, portfolio assessment, and external matriculation assessment. The findings show first that pupils learned to document their design process. Second, pupils’ projects demonstrated various levels of creative thinking skill. Evidences for high-level documentation of the projects were found in pupils’ portfolios. On the other hand, there is much to be learned about documenting teamwork and pupils’ reflection. This research could assist researchers and teachers who are interested in assessing engineering education outcomes.     

Learning in DEPTH: developing a graphical tool for professional thinking for technology teachers

In this issue of the International Journal of Technology and Design, we report on a series of case studies from the second phase of an international project—Developing Professional Thinking for Technology Teachers (DEPTH2). The first phase of the project was a study conducted with both primary and secondary technology pre-service teacher education students in a number of different countries who were given the same teacher-knowledge graphical framework as a tool to support reflection on their professional knowledge. We discovered that, despite the different country contexts, student teachers of technology could articulate aspects of their developing teacher knowledge using the same framework for teacher professional development. As previously reported in this journal (Banks et al. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 14, 141–157, 2004), the common graphical tool enabled them to set out their subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and ‘school’ knowledge and was useful in helping them become more self-aware. In this second phase of the project we have developed this line of research in two ways. First, we extended the range of participants to include experienced teachers involved in in-service work connected to curriculum development. Second, we looked at the inter-relationship for pre-service teachers between their developing professional knowledge and their own ‘personal subject construct’. In this article, the theoretical framework for the subsequent papers is described and set in the context of recent debates surrounding the nature and importance of teacher knowledge; and the way such professional knowledge can be articulated by teachers.     

Learning in Design and Technology: The Impact of Social and Cultural Influences on Modelling

The paper introduces the highly problematic nature of modelling in design and technology education and examines the relationship between cognitive and concrete modelling. Its aim is to gain insight into what learners do, rather than what others say they ought to do in their learning activities. The variety of purposes that educators have for learners’ modelling are discussed through examining the contested curriculum justification for design and technology education itself. The paper proposes that learners’ modelling cannot be extracted from the social milieu in which they act and it provides some insights of these social influences through the analysis of two case studies. Their settings are a girls’ secondary school and a college of higher education. Each case study is presented independently but organised with a common format to consider a) the impact of assessment on learning intentions and outcomes; b) cultural influences on learning and modelling; c) social influences on learning and modelling. A discussion of the emergent themes considers implications for teachers. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.